Art Museum Day in Sydney

As our time in Sydney comes to a close, we are embarking today to visit two of Sydney's art museums: the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Contemporary Art.  The Art Gallery of New South Wales is the in park known as the Domain, which lies between the Botanic Gardens to the north and Hyde Park to the southwest, and that is our first destination.  In passing through Hyde Park, though, we must stop to admire a landmark that we had only seen from a distance.  At the corner of Elizabeth and Bathurst Streets stands a lovely obelisk.  We are curious as to what it commemorates.  When we arrive there, there is no sign to tell us.  Carved into the obelisk is the year it was erected (1857) and the name of Sydney's mayor at the time (Peter Thornton).  Is this a monument to him?   I'll have to check this out later with the help of Google.

Our next detour is to look at Rob's cousin Arthur Sherman's bronze sculpture one more time.  While we examine it, Rob notices a detail that we had not noticed before.  At the base of the sculpture is what appears to be the artist's signature.  The letters have faded, but you can definitely make out the A for Arthur and can kind of make out the whole Arthur as well.  There is no other spot that contains anything that looks like the signature, so this must be it.  Glad we came!

Now, we head towards the museum, passing in Hyde Park what must be Australia's fanciest water fountain, a gift from a mayor:

Then we pass another monument that appears to be a gift from a former mayor:

This seems to be a trend!  How nice of these mayors to erect these monuments (to themselves!).  Peter Thornton, however, does not appear to be one of them.  Googling the obelisk, we learn that it is not a monument to the former mayor, but was erected to allow sewer gasses to escape from the sewer below and up through the obelisk, escaping from the top.  A little bit gross, but looks nice!

At the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the main exhibition is called "Pop to Popism."

You can see from the signage in front of the museum that the exhibit features several works by Andy Warhol.  I particularly like the Warhol films at the entrance which show Lou Reed and Edy Sedgewick.

It is a wonderful and large exhibit with artists from the US, England, and Australia.  Rob enjoys the works by Roy Liechtenstein.  We also enjoy the permanent exhibits, which include some amazing aboriginal art.  We end our visit with paninis for lunch in the museum cafe.

We walked back to our apartment so that we could do some laundry before departing Sydney tomorrow.  At 3:30pm, we departed and walked back to the Rocks area, which is the location of the Museum of Contemporary Art.  The special exhibit there is a review of American artist Chuck Close's printmaking.  His art features portraits of people, some famous, that Chuck Close calls "heads."  The portraits are achieved in a variety of ways, including woven into tapestries, some painted and some in prints (that don't look like prints).  The techniques employed are not easily understandable by me, but the end results are beautiful.  See the museum's web site to see a large selection of the work:

www.mca.com/au.

Dinner reservations for tonight takes us back to Sailor's Thai, also in the Rocks area, where we had earlier dinner with Connie Pinder Barr.  The food here is outstanding.  Coincidentally, we also ate here twice in 2006.  It is still a little to early for dinner, so we enjoy some wine at Buckley's on the wharf, where we can watch the people walk by.

Dinner starts with Tod Mun fish cakes with quail eggs and a Banana Leaf Salad with prawns and chicken.  Our mains are spicy wagyu beef and red curry with chicken  The food here is flavored perfectly (unlike Longrain from the night before) and is perfectly paired with a reisling from Te Whare Ra,  Marlborough, New Zealand.  Time to turn in early!