I've Seen Jesus

Last Wednesday we went to the Academia Musuem, which houses Michelangelo's famous David statue. I didn't think much of it since i had seen it on thousands of post cards, but when i got there i was totally blown away. Amazing! It's freakin huge!Other highlights include Lorenzo Bartolini sculputure plasters. i normally don't get into sculpture, but for whatever reason i was drawn to these.
But by far, besides David, the most impressive exhibits at the Academia were the two musical instrument museums. so freakin cool. There are so many instruments not being played anymore, which is a cryin shame. And the ones that are played are not made with nearly as much skill, detail, and artistic quality. There was a whole room on an instrument maker named Michele Antonio Grandi who made instruments from marble. So beautiful and i thought they were just to look at, but no, they played them. I would show you a picture but google decided to be a failure. Another totally rad instrument maker is Giovanni Maria Anciuti who made woodwind instruments that look like serpents and dragons. Terrifyingly awesome looking. Other instruments not played anymore that should be you ask? Spinet, Hurdy-Gurdy (actually i hear that the girl from arcade fire plays this. thank you arcade fire for playing an instrument that not only looks cool, but has the name hurdy gurdy), archlute, and colascione. Find them and play them!

Everything else in all these museums is starting to get a little old. I've seen Jesus in all shapes forms, sizes, ages, and colors close to 200,000 times just in the european trip now. Double that for the Madonna. I'm sick of religion. That's why i was super stoked ( by the way i have no idea when i started saying this word. Somewhere in between the time i became friends with tucker and riding the train with 5 california boys) to go to the Photography Musuem here in Florence.

Larry Fink had his jazz musician exhibit up which was ehh. There other exhibits were mostly about carte-de-visites and such like that. They did have a hallway dedicated to all sorts of old cameras which i wanted to steal all of them. They had a slideshow of polaroid art, including one from Columbia's beloved Dawood Bey. So nothing impressed me much until i reached their permanent collection.

Italian currators blow my mind. They put these amazingly important pieces in the shadows. I turn the corner in the permenant room, and oh, it's only Henri Cartier-Bresson's most famous, most critiqued, most referenced, might-have-changed-modern-photography photograph of the man jumping over the water, just hanging out in a shadow. you know whatever, original print, big deal. WHAT? Following, with slightly better light was dorothoy lange, ansel adams, minor white, diane arbus, and many others. Thanks Florence for advertising this. These are just as important as David or the Duomo (which was another surprising mind-blowing event), but they get lost, literally, in their shadows.

le sigh...