We arrived at the Brooklyn Museum after seeing the church where mom and dad got married and then doing a lot of walking through Prospect Park.
Online it says the Brooklyn museum is”one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States.” I love museums but i also find that i get overwhelmed pretty quickly because i want to look at/take pictures of so many things. But even though it claims to be really big, it didn’t seem overwhelming. the entire fourth floor was closed, so that narrowed things down for us.
Here’s the Beaux-Arts Court on the first floor.
Luckily the Brooklyn Museum isn’t anywhere near the scope of the Metropolitan so i didn’t take quite as many pictures. Here’s a wonderful candelabra i saw as we hurried around; i didn’t start taking pictures of the accompanying informational plaques at this point so i don’t know anything about it, except that i found it beautiful.
Ditto this little box.
A fabulous art deco-looking tea set that is similar to the one sitting in my living room that mom and dad gave me. this is when i started taking pictures of the info, so i know it’s a “coronet” coffee set made in 1938 by an artist named Walter von Nessen. The company he worked for is the Chase Brass & Copper Company in Connecticut, which was started in 1876 and is still in operation.
I’d love a pair of salt and pepper shakers like this – made by Elsa Tennhardt in 1928.
These things caught my eye because it said they were made near Tampa, Florida. Mom and i are going to Tampa in February! They’re called plummets, hanging weights sometimes used on fishing lines, but these could probably be have worn for decoration. They’re from 200-500 C.E. also known as the “middle woodland” period, and more than 300 of them were found in a site north of weedon island, FL. This is crazily close to where we’ll be staying, so we’ll have to check out the Weedon Island Preserve when we’re there.
I’ve never thought about prehistoric cultures living in Florida, so this is interesting to me. a funny sentence on the Weedon Island Preserve website is: The colorful history of Weedon Island continued with the arrival of homesteaders, speakeasies, a Hollywood movie studio and a 1930s airport.
I mean, that’s a lot of different things!
These two objects which to me look like stone bowties are actually called bannerstones, from 4000 to 2000 B.C.E. The museum’s website says: A bannerstone likely had a practical function as a counterweight on an atlatl, a long wooden shaft with a hooked end that was used to add power to a hunter’s arm when throwing a spear. The bannerstone’s wings may have provided balance.
Hmm. like i said, i never think about all the people who lived right here in the U.S. waaaay before us.
I thought this was interesting because it’s from Naples, Illinois. Ok, i’d never heard of Naples Illinois but i looked it up and it’s only an hour away, just north of Jacksonville. According to Wikipedia, the population listed in the 2000 census was a whopping 134 people, 98.51% of them white and only .75% native american. Yes, .75, not 75. So, most of the people descended from whoever made the bird below were wiped out a long time ago.
I thought the info about this piece was interesting, with the Mississipian people thinking of the world as having three levels.
and then…lunch break! we split some kind of wrap which i enjoyed but mom wasn’t so crazy about and also shared a bottle of tea because i figured a little extra caffeine was a good idea for me. We also split a salad that was chock full of many many healthy greens.
at this point we’d only been at the museum for about 45 minutes, so we were definitely hustling right through…
ok then,
mrs. enough old art for one day already hughes.