For once you've planted children, you're absolutely stuck

[sovay]

For Mother's Day, we took my mother to the Sackler Museum at Harvard and then to dinner at Brasserie JO. There were snails in garlic butter and paintings from Isfahan. The maître d' gave her an African violet in a pot. We came home and watched several episodes of Night Court. I am given to understand today was a success.

Comments

[sovay]

How does that Sackler Museum compare to the Sackler Gallery that's part of the Smithsonian?

It's the same Arthur M. Sackler, if that's what you're asking. I haven't spent substantial enough time in either museum to tell you much about their respective qualities.

[larryhammer]

The Freyer-Sackler (really one museum kept separate by separate founders) is my favorite Smithsonian, though I actually spent more time in Natural History, growing up. It's the oriental art central, with bonus Too Much James Whistler in the Freyer half.

---L.

[sovay]

It's the oriental art central, with bonus Too Much James Whistler in the Freyer half.

I've been to the Freer and Sackler Galleries; just not more than twice in my life, I think. The Museum of Natural History was my native inclination, too.

[larryhammer]

I still deeply miss the gallery in the Natural History of Really Pretty Pieces of Nature that they took down to make way for the Imax theater. Iridescent red hummingbird feather headdress! A wall of morphos! crynoid tracks in limestone!

Ah, well. Sic transit gloria nostalgia.

---L.

[sovay]

I still deeply miss the gallery in the Natural History of Really Pretty Pieces of Nature that they took down to make way for the Imax theater.

Wait, what? When?

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

They took all the taxidermied specimens down. You can sometimes find them by the bathrooms in linoleumed corridors. The childre nowadays are frightened of them. Thanks for the mother's day wishes, btw!