August already?

Hello Mom (she admits to consistently reading this, so, thanks, Mom)!

I have to make this short, as I'm trying to leave work a bit early, and no longer have Internet at home --

This past weekend I moved out of my GW dorm and into a lovely house on Capitol Hill. Glorious, glorious space! This house is a beautiful little historic house with two fireplaces on the ground floor, narrow hallways and all kinds of exciting cabinetry. And a garden with French glass doors.

Last night I attended the American Art Museum's 1934 exhibit, finally -- it was quite superb, and I love their collection of Paul Manship sculptures.

I followed this up with an NPG program -- Culture in Motion, a sort of melding of biography and the performing arts in which one actor portrayed Andy Warhol, and the actress (head of Public Programs) portrayed an interviewer.

I was prepared for it to be really bad, honestly -- something about museum theater sounds all wrong to me -- yet it was actually okay! Better than watching TV, at least. It didn't need to last for an hour and a half, and I found it bizarre that both actors had their scripts in front of them the entire time... not blatantly reading from it, but still, obviously so... and at times the script sounded informercialistic ("Why Andy, tell me what led you to react against the post-modern-abstractionists of 1950's New York!).

What was neat, though, was the fact that apparently all of "Andy's" dialogue was culled from real interviews he provided during his lifetime -- subsequently cobbled into a script for the museum, but nonetheless a rather absorbing way to communicate the artist's intentions, motivations and opinions. I learned a hell of a lot, which is good. I think there's more potential to be explored, however, and came away puzzled that I should have ever been resistant to the idea of partnerships between museums and the performing arts...