Well, this was an interesting visit--unexpected, too, since I wasn't actually planning to go to the
Capitol Building in Sacramento. Originally, I was going to visit the MAIYA Gallery, until I drove all the way there and found out it'd been closed for about two years. Thanks for the stellar up-to-date information, Yelp. You can count this post as two reviews if you like--for not even existing, the MAIYA Gallery gets the shameful rating of Carob.
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| So there! |
Fortunately, as I was driving back, I passed the capitol building and decided to make a visit on the off-chance there might be an art display worth noting. In a pleasantly serendipitous turn of events, I found a rather unique collection of art on the first floor.
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| Hello, what's this? |
This hallway and a few other short corridors connecting to it have a window for every county in the state of California. This might be a familiar concept to anyone who ever visited the California State Fair. These are essentially the booths set up for each county, but scaled down, and according to the museum docent, they're fairly recent additions, ranging from the '80s to a few weeks ago. The windows are designed by people from those counties and made to represent prominent features of the area.
The question of the day is whether this is really art, or just an educational display. Personally, I argue it's both, but my reasoning for it being legitimate art is this: art is meant to reflect human existence, the experiences of people and how they view themselves. One thing I hadn't mentioned yet is these windows are taken quite seriously by the people of the counties. The docent told me a little story; the original display for Lassen County was all wood art. Somebody took issue with this, insisting their county was more than just wood, so the window display was changed to better reflect Lassen County as the residents saw it.
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| Pictured: how people of Lassen County view Lassen County. |
I consider these displays art because they matter to people and because they serve the purpose of conveying human experiences, even if it's just a small window.
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| Hah, window, geddit? Oh, I kill me. |
Long story short, this was a worthwhile visit. Even after seeing the entire hallway, there's an entire building and complex to explore with plenty of paintings and architecture to admire.
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| This picture has no relevance to contemporary art. I just wanted to show off how gorgeous the building is. |
The MAIYA Gallery may have dropped the existence ball, but for the capitol building, I'm going to go ahead and rate it Novelty M&Ms just for being such a nice surprise.
Seriously though, don't trust Yelp.
I love your down-to-earth posts.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's awesome to hear someone describe what the word "art" means to them! I feel like the word art is thrown around so much that people forget to sit down and describe what it really means. To me, art is simply a language where people express themselves. These expressions are interpreted by the audience. Certainly, everything in this building (and even the building itself) can be considered art easily.
I should check out this building sometime.
PS, love the rating system you made.
I highly recommend visiting the Capitol Building in your spare time. It's free of charge and there's a lot to see. They have several floors with beautiful architecture and paintings of different government officials through Sacramento history, a museum in the basement, a display of the Sacramento World's Fair (including some old film of the event!), a tree tour on the grounds, and various interesting sculptures all over the place. If you plan to explore, though, I suggest you pay for day parking at the nearby public parking garage. It's a bit of a rip-off, but it beats having to keep feeding quarters into a parking meter on the side of the street.
DeleteI'm quite proud of the rating system myself! So long as it amuses people.