GREEN

There is a huge parade downtown on the Saturday before the official St. Patrick’s Day. I sometimes wonder why the just the Irish, since we have sizable German, Italian, Jewish and many other populations. (There is a vibrant African-American parade later in the spring.)  There are roots far back in U.S. history, but it really got going in 19th Century New York, arising from massive immigration and reactionary discrimination.  https://tinyurl.com/5n7j59ev                 

We will arrive in Ireland in a month,  but not until after an international detour in the opposite direction.

DECK THE HALL

A simple but striking floral ornament in the central great hall of St. Louis Art Museum. We can’t see the details when zoomed out to get all of it, but the blossoms are delicately and subtlety woven into the greens.

Hoping to shoot our big St. Patrick’s Day Parade today. However, as I write this early Friday evening, we are expecting severe thunderstorms and likely tornadoes later tonight. Mrs. C and I are topping up our phone chargers. Hope it doesn’t affect the parade.  

Oh, and beware the Ides of March.                  

BLUE RIBBON

 

Far be it from me to pass judgment on floral arrangements. This one was awarded first prize at Art In Bloom. I like the fact that its gallery has windows overlooking the museum’s central great hall. The painting the arrangement refers to is on the opposite wall, https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/1449/ .                    

MAX BECKMANN

 

Max Beckmann was an important German artist of the first half of the 20th Century. Like so many others, he fled the Nazis and eventually ended up here. He worked and taught for the last three years of his life at Washington University in St. Louis. Our art museum has a major collection of his work, including a large room exclusively devoted to him. I think the floral arrangement refers to this picture, https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/13448/, not the one shown here.                

A FAVORITE

 

Not the flowers, actually. I mean, I like flowers as well as the next person but it’s not really my department. The painting on the wall, though, is one of my favorites in the St. Louis Art Museum, a 1908  work by the American Paul Cornoyer, The Plaza After Rain. The place is at the southeast corner of Central Park in New York, looking south along Fifth Avenue. It brings up sentimental feelings for my home town.                  

ART IN BLOOM

 

It’s become a local tradition. In late winter, our art museum puts on an event called Art In Bloom. Expert floral arrangers are invited to create a design inspired by one of the pieces from the collection. This year there were thirty-some entries. It can be horrifically crowded, but the museum opens to members two hours early on the first morning. It’s the only time worth going.               

ABOVE THE FRAY

 

Turn around from the parade route and look up. The locomotives of a Union Pacific freight train are about to cross the Mississippi, passing just in front of the Arch. Then there is a billboard promoting St. Louis Public Schools. A bit sad that they need one.