Matisse

This week, Baby Leopard and I are enjoying my maternity leave by accompanying Francisco on a work trip to Western Pennsylvania (including a stop to see Wigwham and Hannah and our godson and a stop at my alma mater--goodness gracious, college was so long ago). It's great, but I'm still getting used to traveling with a baby (and I'm trying to remember not to wear myself out).

Last week, before we left for this trip, Baby Leopard and I crazily decided at the last minute to accompany Francisco on another work trip to NYC. He had a dinner; I mentioned the day before that I was interested in the MOMA's Matisse exhibit, so he said I should come along. Francisco and I feel like champions for navigating NYC with a baby in the rain (made possible, really, only because we have friends who live near Central Park who let us use their apartment as home base).

Anyway, the exhibit of Matisse's cutouts (made in his old age, when he was in a wheelchair) was great. I didn't know that he designed a chapel, complete with stained glass, drawings, and vestments (and designed it using cut-out colored paper). (None of these pictures are mine, since pictures weren't permitted.)

This preparation for a stained glass window wasn't for that chapel, but it is called something like Christmas Eve:

I love his use of color, and I love the unique organic shapes he uses.

The cutout figures are stunning.

The seaweed is great.

And I like the pomegranates.

The downside is that the exhibit is packed. (And we hear that it's perpetually packed.) We were hoping that the rain would keep people away, but I think it's just the opposite: people look for things to do indoors when it rains. This meant that, with a stroller in tow, there was no way I could get close enough to read the descriptions on the walls.