Leta, her aunt Dotty, and I saw "Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum" at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore yesterday, on the holiday. The exhibition sits awkwardly in the Walters' snug space, wedged into two levels with an elevator transfer. And I suspicion that the most monumental pieces remain in England. Fortunately for us, the crowds were diminished, but one still had to shut out the gabble of families talking to one another over the sounds of their own audio tours.

I don't connect easily with ancient Egyptian art, but I was taken by a bronze of King Pimay from Dynasty 22 (8th century B.C.) The figure is about ten inches tall. Pimay wears the royal uraeus cobra and the white crown of Upper Egypt (which knobbed toque adds about three inches to his height). He's kneeling, and in each hand he holds a globular vessel with an offering. We can see low-relief inscriptions on his naked chest. I think that I respond more easily to this work because it's more human, more subtle, more personal.

posted: 6:04:27 PM  

Two glorious things for the second day of January:

• For several hours this afternoon, the respective piles of magazines, newsletters, and catalogs on my kitchen table had been dealt with (read, filed, and/or trashed), leaving nothing but bare melamine. This blissful state of pristineness was clouded by the arrival of the week's (mercifully thin) Economist in the day's mail.
• As I rolled up to the checkstand in the supermarket, the muzak brought me Dusty Springfield singing "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." I just didn't appreciate this song's swoopy romanticism when I first heard it as a kid. I stifled my impulse to air-conduct as I pulled into line.

posted: 5:49:40 PM