30 Juni-- Day 6

A fairly quiet day. After class, I decided to go to the museum that we couldn't find yesterday. It's one of the Staatliche museums in Berlin... The one in Dahlem. So there they house a collection of East Asian art, an "ethnological museum", and they were supposed to have a collection of European Culture stuff, but that was under construction. The East Asian art section was pretty cool- lots of Islamic, Hindu, Polynesian artwork. Lots of religious statues, things to put in altars/shrines, and quite a few pieces of book art. Luckily there were English audio guides, and those were surprisingly nice to listen to. Got to hear the history behind many of the different gods that were being represented, etc.

A beautiful bowl that was in the East Asian art collection. It was some sort of stone or wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl squares. Must have taken freaking forever.

Honestly, this one freaked me out a lot.

Actually, one thing that was really interesting was a collection of Native American art. It was the first time that I had seen (or at least remembered seeing) an exhibition with old Native American art, artifacts, and so on, combined with contemporary art as well. There was a nice section about modern life as well, talking about reservations, legal battles, "American" representations of Native Americans in art, literature, etc, and the current problem with alcoholism. The drew fairly evenly from different geographic areas, which was nice; they had stuff from the northeast, southwest, Alaska, etc. There was also a very self-conscious disclaimer that they put up, with something to the effect of "Even though these artifacts are no longer housed in their original lands, we are taking very good care of them. No Native Americans who have come here have asked for their stuff back yet." Then there were these little quotes from the visitors like "Though we would like to have our people's cultural history back at some point in the future, we currently have nowhere to keep them and nobody to take care of them, so we're content to have them safe and sound here."

There was also a collection of artifacts from Maya, but mostly these alarming ceramic figurines and sculptures. They honestly freaked me out so much that I glanced over everything, walked to the end of the room, and left. I understand now why they managed to get this fierce reputation. (well that and their use of ritual sacrifice, etc) If everyone who tried to invade them was as chicken as I am, they probably would have peed their pants and run away.

Anyway.....

This just looks like the Chinese version of scrabble.

After the museum, I wandered back, ate dinner, and did homework (yes we have homework). Scintillating, I know.