This post may be corny! 😊
Iowa: "Land Where
the Tall Corn Grows"
Des Moines:
Des Moines is the capital of
Iowa:
As you know by now, we
really love sculpture! The John &
Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park is a lovely park in downtown Des Moines that is
enjoyed easily by locals walking to and from work every day! As we entered the park, we
were greeted by these sculptures:
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| Moonrise.east by Ugo Rondinone |
This work gave us pause to
contemplate!
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| Thinker on a Rock by Barry Flanagan |
Here are a couple of other interesting sculptures:
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| Nomade by Jaume Plensa |
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Untitled (Three Dancing Figure, version 3)
by Keith Haring
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I also liked this work by Nara:
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| White Ghost by Yoshitomo Nara |
The Des Moines Art Center is a
noteworthy collection of architectural design by Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei and
Richard Meier. The buildings enhance the
Museum’s collection of art and provides a natural flow.
It’s difficult to select just a few of the wonderful
works for my posts – here are 3 that I especially enjoyed!
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Samurai Tree (Invariant 1)
by Gabriel Orozco
|
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| Figure by Isamu Noguchi |
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Christ Learning to Read
by Henry Ossawa Tanner
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Nebraska: "The
Cornhusker State"
We stayed in a unique Airbnb
in Omaha. The apartment was in an old
renovated school! And we had our own garage, not very common with an Airbnb!
Omaha:
Omaha is a lovely city with
lots of fun things to do. Of course we
went to an art museum, and they have a terrific zoo that we couldn’t resist. This is also the home of the famous Boy’s
Town where we found a very unusual object!
The interior of the Joslyn
Art Museum is absolutely stunning. This
striking Art Deco building features marble throughout -- I wish I could
have taken a picture to do it more justice:
And surprisingly, this contemporary
Chihuly piece enhances the design even more:
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| Chihuly: Inside & Out by Dale Chihuly |
Check out this Self-Portrait
in Lego by Ai Weiwei:
Part of his Circuit
series, Stella named this piece for a city with an auto racetrack:
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| Nogaro by Frank Stella |
Since I love the work of
Canaletto, this beautiful work caught my eye:
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| The Pearl of Venice by Thomas Moran |
We truly love zoos and
taking pictures of the different animals.
Here are a few different ones than we’ve featured from other zoos, plus
some funny faces! Climbing among the cliffs inside
the Desert Dome are these adorable klipspringers:
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| Klipspringer |
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| Yellow-Footed Rock Wallaby |
How fun are these artistic
interpretations of the Japanese racoon dog popular in Japanese folk-tales:
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| Tanuki by June Kaneko |
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| Peacock |
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| Gorilla |
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| African Lion |
And of course, I have to
include my favorite – the Red Panda!
This museum has preserved many
artifacts depicting the history of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). SAC was a part of the U.S. Air Force and was
chiefly responsible for the deployment and maintenance of nuclear-armed bombers
and missiles during the Cold War.
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Atlas ICBM Launch Control Console
(ICBM = Intercontinental Ballistic Missile)
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This image of Earth’s city
lights was created with data from NASA’s Earth Observatory and NOAA National
Geophysical Data Center:
This memorial to the 9/11
attack on the World Trade Center Towers uses neckties to represent the lives lost
in the collapse of the North Tower. The
sculpture measures 28 feet tall.
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| Tie Towers by Greg Laasko |
Father Flanagan’s Boys
Home – the Original Boys’ Town:
“Believe it or Not”,
according to Ripley, this is the World’s Largest Ball of Stamps! Created by the boys at Boys’ Town, this is a
solid ball that is 32 inches in diameter, weighs 600 pounds and
consists solely of 4,655,000 postage stamps.
Lincoln:
Our journey through Nebraska
includes a quick stop in Lincoln, home of the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus. Where the City Campus and downtown Lincoln
merge, a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen cleverly expresses icons from the State of
Nebraska. In addition to being
metaphorical, the sculpture represents the artists' aesthetic process. Wherever they go, Oldenburg and van Bruggen
would carry spiral notebooks to jot notes on.
While visiting Nebraska, they used this method noting “wind”, “goose”, “clouds”
and phrases like “desert ocean of grasses”, “dancing cranes”, etc. Many of the words and phrases in their
notebooks were cut into the aluminum pages of this work. The spiral binding, with the torn pages,
depicts a tornado skipping across the plains.
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Torn Notebook by Claes Oldenburg
and Coosje van Bruggen
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This Nebraska storm was a bit scary!
Hebron:
A good friend (and neighbor)
suggested that we visit Hebron to see the World’s Largest Covered Porch Swing. This swing can hold 25 adults – as you see
here, there were not many people around to swing with us on this rainy day!
As we “swing” out of
Nebraska, we continue our journey across the plains to Kansas….