A close-up of the Harriet Tubman Memorial sculptures located in the South End neighborhood on Columbus Avenue in Boston. Aug. 16, 2017
When I travel, I get to become an explorer. I get to see new things and meet other explorers and people living their everyday lives. When I’m at home, I’m at home. I love spending the day in my pjs piddling or working on my many little and big projects. But when I travel, I don’t stay at swanky hotels. I like centrally located hotels with character that put me in the certain of the things that I want to see and do.
My two missions for today were to visit the Boston Museum of Art and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The hotel desk clerk suggested taking the subway, instead of walking because it’s faster. I’m all for fast. And, the walk from the hotel would take 45 minutes. But once I stepped out the door into a beautiful sun shining day, I just kept on walking.
What I didn’t know once I began my walk, was just how much beauty I would take in along the way. Boston is walkable, beautiful and for a big city, it’s clean. And, as I’m awing over the architecture, a colorful community garden, an artist painting the scenery and low and behold, the Harriet Tubman statue I saw yesterday as the trolley tour whizzed by it. The 45-minute walk to the museums took me close to two hours, but I so enjoyed that walking experience.
Tomorrow is a long day, a trip to Plymouth and Cape Cod.
The gorgeous brownstones on Boston’s South End Historic District close to Chandler and Berkeley Streets. (Aug. 16, 2017)A row of brownstones on Boston’s South End Historic District with the Boston skyscrapers hovering from behind, the Prudential Building and the R2-D2 Building nicknamed because of its Star Wars droid’s top. (Aug. 16, 2017)The Union United Methodist Church on Columbus Avenue in Boston’s South End began in 1796 as a study and worship group on Beacon Hill for a group of African-Americans. This building was dedicated in 1872. (Aug. 16, 2017)Me at Harriet Tubman Park, also known as Harriet Tubman Square, located in the South End neighborhood of Boston honors the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. I saw this memorial yesterday while riding on the trolley tour and had no clue that during my walk to the museums, I would come to this memorial again. (Aug. 16, 2017)A close-up of the Harriet Tubman Memorial sculptures located in the South End neighborhood on Columbus Avenue in Boston. Tubman was an American abolitionist, humanitarian, and an armed scout and spy for the United States Army during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue enslaved people, family and friends by using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. (Aug. 16, 2017)Engraving on the back of the Harriet Tubman sculpture. (Aug. 16, 2017)It’s called “Emancipation, 1913 – In honor of African American freed persons who by their courage and valor gave meaning to emancipation,” at the Harriet Tubman Parkin the South End neighborhood of Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)The Harriet Tubman Park’s brick paving is inlaid with these decorative bronze pavers in Boston which depict aspects of the story of the Underground Railroad. This Bears Paw says to “Follow the bear tracks to navigate mountain routes.” This Bears Paw is also a quilt block. (Aug. 16, 2017)The Harriet Tubman Park’s brick paving is inlaid with these decorative bronze pavers in Boston which depict aspects of the story of the Underground Railroad. This Star block gives directions to North and Evening. (Aug. 16, 2017)The Greenwich Park Garden is part of Boston’s Southwest Corridor Park, a shared garden for people who live in the community. (Aug. 16, 2017)I met Dennis, on my way to the museums, when I cut through the Greenwich Park Garden’s, a shared garden space, painting the beautiful garden and the Boston city scape. (Aug. 16, 2017)The mammoth Boston Museum of Fine Arts on the Fenway Street is the 4th largest museum in the U.S. and contains a whopping more than 450,000 works of art. (Aug. 16, 2017)The grand interior of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (Aug. 16, 2017)The Boston Museum of Fine Arts “Revolutionary Boston” section features paintings by Boston native portrait artist, John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) of Samuel Adams. The portrait shows Adams at a specific moment, as he challenges Governor Thomas Hutchinson in the wake of the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Holding a petition prepared by angry citizens and pointing to the Massachusetts Royal Charter, Adams demands the expulsion of British troops from Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)The Boston Museum of Fine Arts “Revolutionary Boston” section features paintings by Boston native portrait artist of John Singleton Copley of John Hancock. Best known today for his bold signature on the Declaration of Independence. Hancock, aged 28, had just begun his political career when Copley painted his portrait. (Aug. 16, 2017)The vast European room of art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Aug. 16, 2017This oil on canvas portrait by El Greco, in the European room of art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is of Fray Hortencia Felix Paravicino. El Greco was born on Crete and trained in Italy before emigrating in his thirties to Spain. Aug. 16, 2017Anthropoid coffin of the ancient Egyptian chantress of Amun, Princess Henuttawy, daughter of the Theban High Priest of AmunMenkheperre at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Boston. She appears to have been about 70-years-old at her death and was buried in a rough, rock-cut chamber with other family members of the ruling priestly Menkheperre in Thebes. This coffin is one of the finest of this period (Dynasty 21, 1070-946 BC). (Aug. 16, 2017)“The Dressing Table” by John Wilson (1922-2015) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was painted the year he graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. The model, his sister Eleanor, is presented as a modern Venus animated by repeated arrangements of flowers, in her hair, on the printed fabric of her gown, and in the patterned wallpaper and rug with her face revealed in the mirror’s reflection. (Aug. 16, 2017)“Streetcar Scene” by John Wilson (1922-2015) at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts depicts a young black man on his way to work at the Boston Navy Yard where the war effort had opened up new opportunity. The only figure to confront the viewer directly, he shares a seat with white passengers, but appears separate from their reality. Wilson later referred to this print as a reflection of his own anxiety about finding work as a black artist. (Aug. 16, 2017)Built in Boston to evoke a 15th-century Venetian palace, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, opened in 1903, incorporated various architectural elements from European Gothic and Renaissance structures to house Gardner (1840–1924), an American art collector’s growing art collection. Inside the museum, three floors of galleries surround this garden courtyard. In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves, disguised as Boston police officers entered the museum, stealing 13 works of art. (Aug. 16, 2017)Another view of the garden courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in (Boston. Aug. 16, 2017)Me at the ground level of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s garden courtyard which is surrounded by three floors of art galleries in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)One of several sumptuous art-filled rooms in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)Another gorgeous room of the in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)An ornate fireplace and the art above it in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)Isabella Gardner collected many paintings and sculptures of Mary holding the infant Jesus, including this early work by Italian painter, Sandro Botticelli, which was painted in the early 1470s. This painting and more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, architectural elements, rare books, photographs and more can be seen at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)An 1888 portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner by John Singer Sargent at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)The ornate floors inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)Ended the day with an evening stroll and dinner at the Quincy Market in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)Ended the day with an evening stroll and dinner at the Quincy Market in Boston. (Aug. 16, 2017)
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