Most Memorable Trips We’ve Designed This Past Decade: Peggy’s Travels Through the Australian Outback

Peggy has long been one of ActiveTravels’ most beloved clients because she returns year in, year out to the same destinations, particularly India and Australia. You can’t push the typical highlights tour on her since she’s already peeled that onion back 10 layers. You must dig deep to find authenticity. In Australia alone, she has traversed the remote Northwestern part of Australia from Broome to Darwin, flew to one of the outlying Great Barrier Reef islands, and has crossed Tasmania. But the trip I remember most is the one where she wanted to visit Aboriginal art communities in the desolate Australian Outback. We’ve had clients visit Alice Springs to climb Ayer’s Rock, for example, but no one who wanted to use Alice Springs as their hub to see surrounding indigenous villages, often hundreds of miles away. I scoured the internet and found nothing. Then I want on a Sydney-based travel advisor chat room and found a recommended company called Spirit Safaris that lo and behold offered a weeklong Central Deserts Aboriginal Art Tour. In March 2018, Peggy and the owner of the company, Richard, drove to such obscure outposts as the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art & Culture Centre, Warlukurlangu Arts at Yuendumu, and Aboriginal Art Centers at communities including Amata, Ernabella, Fregon, and Iwantja. Fantastic!

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Mass MOCA Announces Major Expansion

Located in North Adams, Massachusetts, just down the road from Williams College and the Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, Mass MOCA is comprised of 26 buildings that were once home to a thriving textile mill. With one building the length of a football field, the museum is in a unique position to house immense works, like the recreation of a 1950s amusement park or a 20-ton sand castle— pushing the boundaries of what most people consider art. One of the most popular offerings is the massive Sol LeWitt installation, where 107 wall drawings are on view until 2033. The long-term exhibition seems to be a hit, because Mass MOCA just announced that other artists will join LeWitt in creating giant spaces devoted to their work. Painter Robert Rauschenberg, sculptor Louise Bourgeois, light artist James Turrell, conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, and instrument maker Gunnar Schonbeck were all chosen for the next round of expansion, set to be unveiled in 2017. Mass MOCA will double its size to 250,000 square feet of exhibition space, making it the largest contemporary art museum in the country. 

 
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Happy 100th, JFK

May 29th marks the 100th birthday of John F. Kennedy. To commemorate the occasion, The National Portrait Gallery is displaying photographs from his life in a gem of show simply titled, “Celebrate: John F. Kennedy.” 72 portraits from the museum’s collection are on view through July 9 including a wonderful pastel by Shirley Seltzer Cooper. You’ll see well-known images of JFK holding John John’s hand in the White House along with rarely seen early shots of Jackie and JFK dating. 
 
As if you needed another reason to visit the National Portrait Gallery, one of my requisite stops every time I visit DC. Home to the official portrait of every president, Nixon never looked so good in a painting by Norman Rockwell and Bill Clinton never looked so bad in a painting by Chuck Close. The building also houses the Smithsonian Collection of American Art, which includes epic-sized works by Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Church (a marvelous depiction of the Northern Lights) and Thomas Hart Benton. Afterwards, grab a latte and rest your weary feet in the courtyard. 
 
John F. Kennedy (1961), by Shirley Seltzer Cooper
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Art From Maine’s Top Museums On Display at Portland Museum of Art

The rugged and raw beauty of Maine has been a lure to many of America’s foremost landscape artists. Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, first visited Mount Desert Island in 1844. When he returned home to New York with a bounty of canvases, Cole’s affluent patrons were astounded by the mix of mountains and sea. Man versus the chaotic forces of nature, particularly fishermen struggling against powerful nor’easters, kept Winslow Homer busy on the boulder-strewn shores of Prouts Neck for more than two decades. In the 1920s, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and other early American abstractionists from Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery joined John Marin to work at his summer cottage in Deer Isle. 

 
This summer, the Portland Museum of Art is taking full advantage of this bevy of work to present Directors’ Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail that includes signature pieces from Maine’s most-renowned art museums. On view from May 21 through September 20, the show will bring the best art Maine has to offer together for the first time. All of these museums are part of the Maine Art Museum Trail. To celebrate the exhibition and the route, Summer Feet Cycling, who I biked with on my 50th birthday, will present a weeklong ride along the coast that visits all 8 museums on the Maine Art Trail. This includes stops at Homer’s former art studio in Prouts Neck, a visit to Andrew Wyeth’s Olson House in Port Clyde, and a requisite day on Monhegan Island, where Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent all painted the island’s cliffs, meadows, and quaint fishing communities. The dates are June 21-27 and September 6-12. Cost is $2595 per person, including lodging, bike rental, guides, van support, museum admission, and most meals.
 
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Stella Retrospective At the Whitney

I finally made it to the new Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan over Christmas break. The new building is located on Gansevoort Street, just off 14th street on the western edge of the island. The day was unseasonably warm when we went, so we took full advantage of the outdoor balconies to stare at the view of the Hudson River down to the Statue of Liberty. From the outside, the Whitney looks small. Once you walk in, however, and peer at the oversized works of sculptor and artist Frank Stella do you understand the immense length of the new building. Very few art museums could put on a retrospective of Stella because one sculpture can take over an entire room. The Whitney does an impressive job of showcasing his works. See the show before it leaves on February 7th and then take a walk on the nearby High Line, the popular 1.5-mile linear park, built from the dilapidated ruins of an elevated railway. It has completely reenergized this once overlooked part of the city. 

 
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Don’t Miss Van Gogh Show at The Clark

The blockbuster show in New England this summer is not at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. No, you’ll have to travel to the northwestern corner of Massachusetts to Williamstown to find the Clark Art Institute. On view until September 13th is “Van Gogh and Nature,” fifty paintings and drawings by Van Gogh from over thirty museums and private collections. We stopped at the Clark yesterday, on the way back from dropping our son off at Cornell, and, wow, was it worth the slight detour. The works from the last 3 years of his life, in Arles, Saint-Rémy, and Auvers, are spectacularly vibrant. There are wonderful pairings of sketches and oils, like two depictions of olive trees hung side-by-side. I also liked how the curator used maps to show exactly where in France these towns are located and provided large photographs to see how they would look during Van Gogh’s time. 

Inspired by Van Gogh’s work, you can take you own walk through glorious nature. Stroll through the Clark’s meadows atop Stone Hill for a wonderful vista of Mount Greylock and the town of Williamstown below. Take a breather on the bench inside Thomas Schütte’s “Crystal,” an open-sided architectural piece newly planted on the grounds. You know it’s just been built because it smells like fresh wood. Then make your way down to the Lunder Center at Stone Hill, also on the Clark property to find another gem of an exhibition devoted to “Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother),” otherwise known as Whistler’s Mother. Two small galleries of Whistler’s prints and drawings accompany the famous work. One glance at any of these works to see the mast of a ship, portrait of a niece, or buildings so small you’ll need a magnifying glass to find, and you’ll quickly appreciate Whistler’s immense talent. The Whistler show will be on view until September 27th, so make the effort to get here soon. You’ll thank me! 
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Seeing the Art of Cape Town

On our first full day in Cape Town, Lisa and I took the sage advice of a South African art collector and hired Stephen Long as our guide for the day. Stephen is well known in the Cape Town arts community (and to the shaman of the Eastern Cape) as one of the most renowned bead dealers in the region. Many of the beads you find in the beadwork of South African art is actually imported from Venice, the Czech Republic, and now China. Our first stop was the South African National Gallery, where we viewed activist art created during the oppressive apartheid regime. One of the most disturbing pieces is the three life-sized figures with horns and no mouths called The Butcher Boys, created in plaster by Jane Alexander.

Then it was time see some of the impressive local crafts found in the city. The Gallery Shop, on bustling Church Street (48), is a gem of a small store selling colorfully beaded jewelry, sculpture, wall hangings, pillowcases, and more. Owner Lorin Strieman used to run the gift shop at the Natioanl Gallery and she has a great eye for contemporary South African craft. It’s hard not to purchase all the whimsical beaded animals at Monkeybiz. The pieces were created by impoverished, HIV-positive women who were trained as artists to make a living. It was wonderful to walk upstairs and see all these women sitting together and laughing while creating art. Just as alluring is the work at Streetwires, where sculpture of all sizes is created by wire and bead. Like Monkeybiz, you can walk upstairs to see the large group of artists at work. Bags in hand from all the goods we purchased, we visited the colorful houses and mosques found in the nearby Bo-Kaap neighborhood still home to a large Cape Malay population. All of our purchases are now back at our house, cherished from our memorable day with Stephen. We’re happy to pass along his contact information to anyone who’s interested in hiring him for the day. 

 

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