30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #19 – Finish visiting the entire MFA with Caroline

2014 11-23 MFA -  MapI’m calling this one. And with that I’m down to eight remaining on my 30×30 list. I told you I’d be moving through quite a few this week! After almost four hours at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Caroline and I were exhausted. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen 99% of it and what we haven’t seen I’m sure we will. Below is just a taste of what we saw today and if you’ve followed this blog for a while you know I’ve been to the MFA many times. You can see some of my related posts by clicking here or on the Museum of Fine Arts tab at the bottom of this post or by using the search bar!

We’ve been quite a few times together, but the last time we went we saw specific exhibits and I knew that there were still large portions of the museum I hadn’t visited and figured I might as well drag her along with me 🙂 Our main goals today were the Art of the Ancient World and Art of Asia, Oceana and Africa wings of the museum, as we’d previously viewed the Art of the Americas, the Contemporary Art and most of the European wings.

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ARC, Books

Book 293: The Antiquarian (Enrique Alonso #1) – Julián Sánchez

Sánchez, Julian - The AntiquarianI stumbled across Sánchez’s work on NetGalley when I requested The Art Restorer, reviewed later this week. The publisher was incredibly accommodating and provided a galley of this for me to review as well! (Damn me and my completion-ist tendencies!) I received no compensation in return for my honest response to the novel.

Although it started off a bit slow, maybe as a result of the translation?, I quickly fell into the book and ended up loving it! The closest thing I can find to compare it to is Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series (I’ve reviewed the two most recent here and here)! I won’t spend too much time comparing the two works/authors, because I want to give Sánchez his due, but suffice to say this novel (and what I’ve read of The Art Restorer) are SO much better.

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Culture Corner

Culture Corner – June 2013

So for my second Culture Corner post (see the first one here) I have A LOT to share. I was really tempted to just drop in the photos and let you enjoy them, but I guess I should explain everything or at least give some basic descriptors, so without further fanfare here you go.

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2013 Challenges, Books

Book 195: Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World – Sharon Waxma

Waxman, Sharon - LootSorry for the long post in advance, it’s been a long time since I’ve read a book about museums and antiquities and I forgot how much I love them and how much they make me think!

This book has been on my to-be-read shelf since July of 2011 and I can’t believe I waited this long to read it! I will never forget my first Anthropology class in undergrad and the professor going off on a tangent about the looting of the museums after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It pretty much guaranteed I would be an Anthropology major. (I later switched to cultural anthropology and focused on gender in the media, but still the people were awesome!) The intrigue, the drama, the affairs and the crimes, it could be a spy novel if it were fiction and not fact! This book will count as a bonus book for my 2013 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

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