So at the end, we came up to Boston...another train, another bus, another shuttle to the hotel. In the morning we went to the JFK Library. IM Pei designed the building set on the waterfront of Boston Bay...on University of Massachusetts landfill...across from the center of the city. Charlotte went through the exhibits while I spent time in the atrium, under the US flag, reading the day's New York Times. And watching visitors as they came from the museum areas (JFK's inauguration in 1960, the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement...remember integrating the University of Alabama?..."segregation now, segregation forever" George Wallace said, and his death), they would come into this high atrium, overlooking the bay and the city. And pause and reflect...under the huge flag hanging from the roof.
In the afternoon, we went to the Institute of Contemporary Art, also on the bay, also overlooking the city center, also mixing inspiration with reflection. In this case, Mark Bradford, an LA artist working with paper, old billboard materials, found objects to create vast "maps" and patterns. Some of his work can be found at: http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?artist=172 Like the JFK Library, the ICA combines the interior exploring our human experience and the exterior exploring our relation to the world, the water, the larger city.
This has been a good swing east. Tomorrow we fly west, far from the sea, close to the mountains.
