cornerofmadness

That’s what today was all about. Even though I overslept then dilly-dallied around trying to figure out do I go to Columbus today or tomorrow, I finally saddled up and headed north. I head to the Columbus Museum of art to see the Live Forever exhibit of Egyptian funerary rites on loan from Brooklyn. For once my college ID was worth something. They asked, ‘you a student’ no, professor. Usually I’m told it only counts if you teach K-12 but I was allowed in for FREE. WHEE.

I was in no hurry. I hadn’t been in the museum since I left Columbus in 98. They had three traveling exhibits, the Egyptian one being the largest and best advertised. One was the work of Tooker…mostly tempura on gressode and mostly not my thing. Some of it was visually interesting, most was not. Ditto with some of their other permanent collections though I found two pieces I want to look up more on the net about since they were intriguing.

As for the exhibit I really wanted to see, it was done up nice and tried to be rather kid friendly, which as needed since it was filled with kids. In some ways it wasn’t that much more spectacular than the standing exhibit at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh (that’s the problem growing up around a world class museum, you get spoiled) but there were some very nice pieces, including several mummies.

The real stand out was that it went out of its way to elucidate the Book of the Dead, inclosing having bits of it on Papyrus and then translated and explained. They also explained in detail, shabties, how mummies were made and one of the more fascinating aspect, how to budget for your death in Egyptian times. They had a break down of costs of materials in general and how the non-Royal elite tried to keep up with the Royals and how everyone else tried to keep up with them. For example they had side by side a gold mummy face plate next to a badly painted terra cotta one. They also explained how to keep costs down old tombs were recycled and the new owners named carved into it after the previous occupant was erased.

They also had something I’ve only seen in pictures, a more modern mummy dating to the Hellenistic period with a painted on linen face plate of a Greek man and under a lid that you got to lift, the whole linen of another (but poorer) Greek man. They even painted his fingers onto the cloth. All things considered though, I would have wanted to paid for top shelf embalming where my organs would be surgically removed and put in the canopic jars. The mid-level mummification they just injected cedar resin into you and drained the liquefied remains out your bum. (There was a cheaper one, let’s just say we’re not going there and neither did the historian Heredotus)

For the kidlets they had things on the wall to lift up and learn including hieroglyphs and the one thing I WOULD have done if I had gone with my friends from work, they had costumes and heads of all the gods that you could put on an take photos (the only ones allowed in the exhibit)

I went from there to go damage my credit cards at the Asian supermarket and Trader Joe’s and at the expensive Asian restaurant and two Borders. Drove home in the blinding rain and high winds. But I got new manga including something from the lady who did Dramacon (not sure if I like the art) and almost bought the ‘manga’ done for the Odd Thomas series but I’m not a fan of Queenie Chan’s art. Also someone misplaced Twilight ‘sweethearts’ candies in the manga aisle. I think I died a little looking at it. Got musk melon mochi, yum but sadly they were out of red bean buns at the Asian store. I did get the yam shirataki noodles and there were a few things that I wanted to try but honestly there was zero English on the packaging so I didn’t know where to begin.

ETA - I forgot one of the exhibits- clothing as wearable art. You know in all honesty I would have been more impressed if there were more 1900's ball gowns. Some of this stuff was less than 20 years old. I've seen nicer collections online while scouring around for clothing references for stories. I was intrigued by the haltar top minidress from the 60's made out of nothing but plastic discs. One wonders what you wore under it if anything.