Churchill Downs & The Kentucky Derby Museum

Posted on January 4, 2024 by admin

Even before you enter the grounds of Churchill Downs, you encounter bronze horses. Both are winners of the Kentucky Derby. One is Aristides, at the Paddock gate, who came in first in the first Derby in 1875 – long before it was a Run for the Roses,® or the first race of the Triple Crown,® or the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports,® or the object of 21st-century renovations.

The Derby was about drinking and gambling from day one, I believe, and not in moderation, yet genteel enough (at least in the stands) for the monied elite — traditions that grand event upholds to the present, all the other trappings notwithstanding. What better for a spring day in Kentucky?

The other horse, and statue, is more recent: Barbaro.

I suspected right away that some physical remains of Barbaro were there as well, and yes, his ashes are, I read later. I’ve pretty much ignored thoroughbred horseracing most of my life, and even my limited interest in the ’80s was because I enjoyed going to the Derby in person. So I wondered about Barbaro. I must have heard the news story in the 2000s, but it had evaporated, gone amid the backdrop of a household with little kids.

Still, I figured, as a Derby winner his birth and death years (2003 to 2007) pretty much got to the heart of Barbaro’s career – a shooting star among race horses, brilliance to ashes. Later I looked up the details, including in a succinct, eulogizing video, and that’s about the size of it.

A thoughtful comment from the video’s comment section: Not making an anti-racing statement but, if you feel bad for Barbaro, take a moment to think about all of the other horses that broke down and died, on/off the track, too. Barbaro got kind letters, flowers, signs and even gift baskets with horse feed sent to his veterinarian centre, because he was a champion. Just seems sad that we only do that for the gifted athletes of the sport, even though every one of those incredible animals gave it their all for our entertainment.

@catarena8031

Near Barbaro is the entrance to the Kentucky Derby Museum, and near the admission desk is a countdown clock.

(As it appeared on December 28.)

While we were still in the parking lot, headed for the entrance, we passed by a young couple leaving. Out of the blue the man said to us, “Take the Barn and Backside Tour. It costs more, but it’s worth it.”

“Really?” I said, in a friendly tone. They both nodded their agreement.

“You get to see a lot more,” he said, gesturing with his hands a bit, sort of making parentheses around his sizable beard. “Some of the stables and other places behind the track.”

We agreed that that sounded good and parted ways. I asked about it at the desk. Sorry, sold out. So we got the basic tour and museum admission, a spot over $20 per person. The museum, well organized and informative but not overtaxed with dense reading, was worth a look, for a small glimpse into a whole other world.

Also, you get to see a facsimile of Mage, last year’s winner.

And the trophy War Admiral received in 1937 for winning the Derby.

Along with a good many other items. Other displays included Triple Crown winners – each one had a kiosk – how thoroughbreds are raised, the building of the track and the early races, video screens to call up and watch previous televised races (I watched ’86; I only heard it when there), images of the flamboyant hats and dresses worn by female racegoers, and the part African-Americans have played in the event, especially as jockeys: a good many in the early years, including Oliver Lewis; nil as Jim Crow solidified; some since the legal end of segregation.

The tour started with a short presentation on a 360-degree screen well above eye level: part movie, part still images with a sound track, and about what the horses and the jockeys and all the many other support staff do to put on the Derby. Quick-moving, it idealized the event somewhat, but who would expect otherwise?

The cinematography was exceptional sometimes, giving me the sense that whatever else the racehorses are, they’re massive, powerful beasts of tremendous energy. And what manor of men would perch themselves atop these beasts at their top speeds? Besides relatively small men and a few women, that is. I have a new-found respect for jockeys.

Also, it got me to thinking, a little along the lines of the comment above. Sure, it’s fine to know about the winners down the years, and I’ll go along with the notion that, say, Secretariat was a very great racer indeed. But what about the also-rans? Not just also-rans, but last rans?

Back when Aristides took the prize to the crowd’s acclaim, a horse named Gold Mine proved not to be one, coming in 15th and last. When Sir Barton won on his way to the first Triple Crown in 1919, Vindex was 12th and last.

Vindex? After the Roman who rebelled, unsuccessfully, against Nero? Could be. I can imagine the owner reading about the bold Vindex in the works of I forget which Roman historian. It would have been a thing for a horse-owning Kentucky gentleman to do in his youth in late 19th century, possibly even in the original Latin.

One more. When Secretariat won the day in 1973, before a national audience (including a 12-year-old me), Warbucks was 13th and last.

From the museum, the tour group moved to under the grandstands, guided by a competent employee of the track. She told us a capsule history of the race and the Downs.

Out to the lowest level of the grandstand. It’s a good view, I have to say.

When was the jumbotron added? About 10 years ago.

The guide provided more history and some physical information about the track itself, and about the enormous stable complex on the other side of the track, way off in the distance, which sounded big enough to have its own zip code. (It doesn’t seem to.)

Then we headed back to the museum for a few more minutes, and that was that. Chintzy, Churchill Downs. That was more like a $12 museum + tour package. Not even a few minutes up in the grandstands? Did some whiz in the organization, or maybe a computer program, determine that eliminating the small but measurable cost in elevator maintenance and maybe slightly higher insurance premiums was worth shorting the patrons in their experience? Just speculation.

All I know is that the view from the grandstands should have been part of it. One visit to the Derby, I had access to the grandstands, and wandered around quite a while. You really get caught up in the thing looking down on the lively, colorful crowds and the active racetrack. Even on an empty winter day, I think you’d feel an echo of those festive times.

City of Champions?

Posted on December 19, 2023 by admin

The air was chilly, but still above freezing when Ann and I arrived in Joliet on Sunday just after noon. Not bad for December.

I’d never heard Joliet called the City of Champions, but there it was in a new-looking mural facing one of downtown’s parking lots. The city’s web site says, unhelpfully, that “[Joliet] is known as the ‘City of Champions’ for it’s [sic] world class bands. Music, art, theatre and history are found throughout the city.”

A line vague enough that could have been AI generated, except that a robot writer probably wouldn’t use it’s for its. That’s a human-style mistake. Just a hunch.

Champions or not, Joliet was a prosperous place once upon a time, and its downtown reflects that. The city could well be a growth hub again someday, once the Sunbelt gets just a little too sunny, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Rather than put it in a park, Joliet situated this sizable tree on the edge of a parking lot, near a dry fountain that I hope runs in the warm months. The tree does make the spot look a little less forlorn.

Downtown Joliet sports some interesting buildings, and we spent a few minutes taking a look. Such as a bank building from a pre-FDIC time when banks dwelt in sturdy-looking edifices with Corinthian columns.

Dating from 1909 with a design by Mundie & Jensen of Chicago, most of whose work wasn’t far from the metro area. It’s still a bank, incidentally.

Nearby are other works of similar vintage.

Even older: the Murray Building, 1886.

A giant guitar marks the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum. I didn’t know Illinois had one of those.

That is because it’s new. So new, in fact, that the galleries aren’t open yet, according to its web site, but the gift shop is. Next time I’m in Joliet, if it is all open, I might drop in.

A look at Google Street View tells me that the guitar was fixed to the exterior sometime after November 2022. There have been museum promotional materials in windows since 2018 at the earliest. Before that, a pinball/video game arcade called The Game Show, of all things, occupied the ground floor (in 2017). Back in 2007, the earliest image available, the building was occupied by Phalen’s Fine Furniture. Guess the Great Recession proved to be the end for that business, as Phalen’s was gone by ’13.

The Illinois Rock & Roll Museum has been inducting artists since 2021, with an inaugural roll that year that included Chicago, Cheap Trick, Ides of March, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, REO Speedwagon and the Buckinghams. Most of those I could see, but Cheap Trick and REO Speedwagon had an Illinois connection? Cheap Trick was from Rockford and REO Speedwagon from Champaign. Shows you what I know.

The connection doesn’t have to be that strong, apparently. As long as the performer was either born in Illinois; started a musical career in Illinois; was based in Illinois; or recorded in Illinois, then he, she or they can be inducted. Note that as of this year, there’s no “she.” That is, not a single female inductee. Better get on that, IR&RM, before someone more vocal than me calls you out on it.

Next to the museum is the former Ottawa Street Methodist Episcopal Church, a structure dating from 1903.

“The Ottawa Street Methodist Church is a two-story, Neoclassical Revival style structure built by George Julian Barnes in 1909 on a Joliet limestone foundation,” says the city. “The structure is a wonderful and bold interpretation of the Triumphant Arch motif as applied to a Neoclassical Revival institutional building.”

These days, the building serves as part of the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

My fingers were getting a little cold, so we didn’t linger for a picture of the former church, as grand as it is. Except for this detail.

For The Good Of Man is inscribed under the side pediment. The church didn’t realize it in 1903, of course, but it’s a good thing it didn’t read To Serve Man.

A block away is another former church building.

Old St. Mary’s Carmelite, which hasn’t been an active religious structure in 30 years. New owners are currently rehabbing the property and by next summer it will be an event venue for “weddings, corporate events, fund-raisers, proms and more,” Patch reports. Good to know. I’d say that’s a good re-use for a neglected church, much better than destroying its unique beauty.

One more pic from our short Joliet walkabout: Joliet himself in bronze, beside the local library.

Seen him before, and I probably will again.

E-Tannenbaum

Posted on December 11, 2023 by admin

When in doubt, spend a few minutes with an LED Christmas tree and its shifting color array.

Bright homages to Christmas trees might be more like it, but evoking the winter holiday all the same.

Billy Goat Tavern & Grill ’23

Posted on December 7, 2023 by admin

I can’t say whether Billy Goat Tavern & Grill looks exactly the same as it did in the ’80s, but it sure felt the same on Monday night. The walls of photos, neon, beer taps, rows of bottles, knickknacks and basic restaurant tables and chairs, and plenty of worn red bar stools. The vibe is Chicago tavern clutter, comfortable as an old shirt.

Now that I think about it, I had the most Greek experience I’ve ever had at the Billy Goat, having never yet made it to Greece. Shortly before the 1988 presidential election, the Dukakis campaign staged a campaign parade on Michigan Avenue, and after work I went to watch, on a spontaneous quasi-date with a fetching Greek-American woman I knew. Was it a torchlight parade? In my memory, there were torches, but probably no: that seems like a 19th-century thing.

We were within feet of the candidate as he walked by, his expression a little stiff and discouraged. Later we repaired to the Billy Goat, which was wall-to-wall packed, including many Greek Americans – wearing the colors of the Greek flag, some of them — with everybody feasting on cheeseburgers and beer, the place alive with talk, and the clank of spatulas on the grill, and the hissing burgers and onion air, and the clouds of cigarette smoke still common in bars and restaurants.

I’m pretty sure the workers called out Cheezborger! Cheezborger! in those days, which might be an example of life imitating art, or more likely, life and art reinforcing either other.

Rumor was that Dukakis himself would make an appearance, and well he should have, but he never did. He should have shown up in his tank helmet, shaking hands and mugging for cameras. Rather than be embarrassed by it, he should have leaned into it, but no.

Back here in the 21st century, there are reminders of goats at Billy Goat. How could it be otherwise?

You can see a wall of bylines at Billy Goat. Once upon a time, both major Chicago newspaper buildings were within easy walking distance, even in winter, so newspapermen hung out there.

Best known was Royko, who worked the place into his column from time to time. From there, the place went on to wider notice, sort of.

I expect the number of journalists is fairly low these days, outnumbered by other kinds of downtown residents and workers, plus tourists. On Monday night at least, no one called out when you ordered your cheeseburgers; they just went to work at it.

Except for the vegan in our group – she was a good sport about it — we had cheeseburgers and chips and beer. What else? In theory, a few other things are on the menu, but we didn’t test it. No fries, either.

We also sipped from a single glass of Malört. It’s a Chicago thing to do.

Around the corner from the entrance of the Billy Goat, directly facing Lower Michigan Ave. and just north of the Chicago River., is a mural and a tavern sign.

The mural is a work by Andy Bellomo, “a self-taught artist who began her creative interest as a young teen studying the color, light, shapes, and lines of traditional stained glass in churches,” according to the the Magnificent Mile Association, as part of a number of murals known as Undercurrent (at least to the Mag Mile Assn.).

It’s been there about a year, which would account for me never noticing it before. Haven’t been down to Lower Michigan Ave. in a some years, but I can assure the world that it’s still the hard urban space it’s always been.

There’s more of the Undercurrent mural on the other side of the tavern’s entrance, not captured in the below image.

But I did capture, without realizing it, part of a different mural, one that’s been there for decades, by an artist mostly lost to time in Chicago, even though his heyday was only about 50 years ago. It’s on the extreme right edge of the image: a rainbow goat.

“Many people ask about the rainbow goats painted on the walls outside of The Goat,” notes the tavern web site. “They were painted in 1970 by Sachio Yamashita, known as Sachi… Billy [Sianis, original owner of the tavern] made a deal with Sachi. Every day after Sachi and his helpers finish their work, beer and borgers are free! Unfortunately Billy Goat Sianis passed away on October 22, 1970 just days before the paintings were complete.”

I might have noticed the goats before, but didn’t give them much thought. I didn’t notice them this time, or I’d have taken a full image, since how many rainbow goats could there be in the world? On walls, that is.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like LED

Posted on December 3, 2023 by admin

Unlike some years, when snow fell just as the month started, December 2023 began with cold rain. Not heavy at all, but persistent through the first morning of the month, and then again Saturday night into this morning. Very pleasant to fall asleep to.

Near Volkening Lake, the local park district has put up a small patch of seasonal lights. Some are nets of blubs wrapped around tree trunks, a fairly ordinary display. There are also other light displays.

Less standard LED constructions, looks like. Come to think of it, the bulbs probably are LED as well. Never seen ones quite like it, but for all I know, they could be the rage among municipal holiday lights.

More Manhole Covers

Posted on November 16, 2023 by admin

Almost warm today, except in the house, where I maintain temps at a skinflinty 68° F. in the colder months. It wasn’t warm enough outside to raise the inside temps, and it was so windy I decided not to built the possible last back-yard fire of the year. Maybe tomorrow.

One thing leads to another online, and from Hello Kitty I eventually made my way to the Atlas Obscura article on Japanese manhole covers.

“In Japan, many manhole covers are works of urban art — elaborate, curious, distinctive, even colorful,” AO notes. “They have become a tourist destination unto themselves, and attract a legion of dedicated manhole enthusiasts who travel the country to visit some of the thousands of unique designs.”

This seems to be a thing that has happened in the about 30 years since I lived there, so I’d never heard of it. At least, the article puts the origin of the covers as a local initiative in 1985, and it probably took a while to become a mass phenomenon.

“Typically, ‘local manholes’ or ‘design manholes’ feature elements special to a particular location: a town emblem, landmark, event, or official bird or flower,” the article says. “While there is some logic to the placement of the covers… [some] appear to have been placed without rhyme or reason.”

The last image in the article, depicting Osaka Castle, would hew to its place even without the kanji for Fukushima Ward, Osaka – it has the miotsukushi.

That’s something to look for, should I make it back to Japan. In the meantime, I sometimes look down at manhole covers in other places. Such as in Ireland and Spain, and in San Antonio more recently. Here’s one weathered by many decades, probably.

At least the lettering is barely visible. A much newer cover reminds us to protect the downstream fish.

East Jordan Iron Works are headquartered in Michigan, and the company these days is known by the less specific moniker, EJ Group. No substance to that name, if you asked me.

Simple, but with a certain style.

Not a manhole cover, but sharing a similar shape, and displaying an intricate design, at Lake Plaza in Elmendorf Lake Park in San Antonio.

Best visibility would be with a drone, looks like, but the edge-on view isn’t bad.

Centennial Park and the Vanderbilt Ramble

Posted on November 8, 2023 by admin

On Saturday the sun came up in Nashville and we weren’t there to greet it, having stuffed ourselves with hot chicken and beer the night before, and then engaged in conversation until fairly late. On the other other hand, we were there to see the sun set later that day from the roof deck.

Between those moments, we did a lot of walking. First we set out from our well-located short-term apartment along side streets past the site of our residence in the early ’80s, which was also the place we built an isolation tank for ourselves, then to Centennial Park, the crown jewel among Nashville parks.

On Saturday morning we merely crossed the park, where one of our number had been arrested for drinking beer in public 40-plus years ago, exiting it at the end (or beginning) of the short Elliston Place. We noted the buildings and businesses gone from that street – such as Rotier’s and its barbecue chicken without peer – and additions, none of any particular character.

The Elliston Place Soda Shop still serves tasty meat-and-threes, wonderful breakfasts, and incredible milkshakes, though in a larger location next door to its original site, where it reopened in 2021. The look is about right, a larger space but still a close homage to the original. The real test was the food, and the place passed with flying colors.

Then came the Vanderbilt Ramble: along sidewalks and across greens, past dorms and classrooms and other buildings, many tied to specific sets of memories: McGill Hall, Sarratt Student Center, the Main Library, Furman Hall, and 21st Avenue to the former Peabody Campus, where we noted that Oxford House had vanished, replaced by a parking garage still under construction; East Hall is still that and West Hall that; but Confederate Memorial Hall is merely Memorial Hall and the Social-Religious Building is named for some chancellor or other. Former Social-Religious has ten pillars out front, which to this day I believe stand for the Ten Commandments. On its expansive front steps, every day once upon a time, a blind student practiced his bagpipes. He wasn’t bad.

Further wanderings took us through Hillsboro Village, a storefront shopping district that existed 40+ years ago, though most of the shops are different these days. Returning to campus, we passed through the blocks of fraternity and sorority houses, once marked by regular streets, which are now pedestrian walkways. We had little to do with them in our student days, though one of us pledged ATO, which didn’t take. I noted the spot where I had a short springtime conversation with a tipsy future vodka billionaire. Indeed, besides going to the same junior high and high school as I did, he spent one year at VU.

The arboretum that is the Vanderbilt campus, including Peabody, was near peak coloration, a blaze of leaves in places. Many trees are enormous and stood well before anyone on campus today was born. The day was warm and campus alive with people, though never crowded anywhere. Students went about their weekend business, and paid no attention to the oldsters wandering by, with their collective recollections trailing behind them.

On Sunday afternoon, we spent more time in Centennial Park, legacy of a long-ago expo.

The temporary art building, a replica of the Parthenon, was rebuilt in the 1920s to be more permanent, and it abides. So does Athena inside.

She wears the world’s largest sandals, probably.

Though Steve and Rich had never seen her, Athena isn’t exactly new, having been completed by sculptor Alan LeQuire in 1990. I’ve visited a few times in the years since.

Much more recent (2016) is the Tennessee Women’s Suffrage Monument, also done by Alan LeQuire. None of us had seen it.

We visited a few other spots in the park, but forget to visit the new Taylor Swift Bench. Oops.

OLLU & Elmendorf Lake Park

Posted on November 1, 2023 by admin

Despite the cold, we had about 40 kids show up yesterday to collect sweets, maybe half again as many as the busiest Halloweens of the past, though I don’t count every year. We ran through an entire box of full-sized candy bars plus some other smaller confections. Almost all of the kids came before dark, which has been the case for many years now. Another example of widespread nervous parenting that’s pretty much entrenched, I figure. When I was that age, we went out after dark in our Invisible Pedestrian costumes and we liked it.

Most of the costumes this year were buried under coats, but I have to say the best of ’23 was a tallish kid in no coat and a white-and-red full-body chicken outfit, complete with a comb as prominent as Foghorn Leghorn’s. The costume might well have been warm enough for him to go without a coat. The color scheme reminded me of Chick-fil-A right away.

I’m just old enough to remember sometimes receiving baked goods and fruit on Halloween; those vanished by about 1970, victim of the lurid nonsense stories about razor blades in apples, poisoned cakes and chocolate Ex-Lax being given to kids. We found the thought of that last one pretty funny, actually.

This morning we woke to about an inch of snow destined to melt later in the day. A small preview of winter.

The cold is an unpleasant contrast to South Texas last week, where it was hot for October. (Temps have fallen there since then, I heard.) Just after noon on Saturday, I headed over to the campus of Our Lady of the Lake University, OLLU. I’d heard of the school for a long time, but my knowledge of it never rose above the level of hazy.

Main Building, the sign says. A name refreshing in its simplicity. The building’s a little more intricate.

Mere steps away is Sacred Heart Chapel.

The school recently marked the chapel’s centennial. At your feet at the entrance, a date.

“The English Gothic chapel was the vision of Mother Florence Walter, Superior General of the Congregation of Divine Providence from 1886-1925,” says the university web site. “In 1895, she looked down from Prospect Hill at a swath of wilderness and declared, ‘One day we will have a chapel here. And its spires will be seen throughout the city of San Antonio.’ ”

That must have a good day for the superior general. Funding the chapel took 11 years, but eventually the Sisters, who had founded the school in 1895, were able to hire a renowned architect, Leo Dielman, to design the chapel. A prolific architect of sacred space – more than 100 churches to his credit – Dielmann had his funeral in 1969 at Sacred Heart Chapel.

When I went in, a funeral was going on. I gazed in for only a moment from the very back of the nave. Looked like this, except for the sacrament pictured.

OLLU borders Elmendorf Lake Park, with walking trails ringing a small manmade lake, created by the damming of Apache Creek. I took a walk. When the sun periodically came out from behind the clouds, it felt like it was about 90 F. It was a sweaty walk. Needed that hat I’d left in Illinois.

Thick foliage luxuriates on the lakeshore.

Almost no one else was around on what, compared with South Texas temps only a few weeks and months earlier, was merely a warm day. A Saturday at that. The place gave out no sense of being avoided out of fear for one’s person; just ignored. A few recreational fishermen stood on the shore, angling. One was in a small boat. That was all.

Another, more hard-surface part of the park includes benches. Parc Güell sorts of benches, but without the crowds.

No human crowds, that is. Birds were another matter. An astonishing number of birds occupied a handful of the trees in the park, ca-ca-ca-ca-ing with a resounding volume, especially on a small island I saw later is called Bird Island. Thinking on it, their Hitchcockian vibe might keep some people away. A lot of people.

Birds looking something like herons with completely black plumage. I couldn’t place them, but my bird knowledge is pretty meager. Crows? They look leaner of build than crows. But what do I really know about crows?

I do know enough not to walk under them. A few of the bird-occupied trees were along the path of my walk, so I took minor detours to avoid any direct bombardment. I passed through the park without being the target of any droppings.

I thought of a Red Skelton TV sketch featuring his characters, seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliff (I had to look the names up, but not that fact that he did those characters). One of the birds noted that the beach below was very crowded. The other responded, “There’s no sport in that.” Odd what sticks with you after more than 50 years.

Ruby City

Posted on October 30, 2023 by admin

I didn’t take many pictures in Austin this time around. But after dinner one night, Tom had to answer a call, and I had a few moments to document a minor example of Austin neon. It’s a good town for neon.

That was the restaurant entrance. The full name of the place is Wu Chow. Good chow, as it happens.

In San Antonio, I was much more attuned to image-making, at least on Saturday, when I was footloose and out to see new things. Such as Ruby City.

Ruby City is a new art museum west of downtown on the not-so-mighty San Pedro Creek. Which is wider at this point than much of the San Antonio River.

“The story of Ruby City — the landmark museum designed by world-renowned architect Sir David Adjaye… — begins with the lucid dream of a dying woman,” Texas Monthly reported just before the museum opened in 2019.

“In the spring of 2007, Linda Pace, at age 62 a legendary patron of contemporary art in San Antonio, understood that her breast cancer, diagnosed a few months earlier, was likely terminal. All the money in the world could not keep the woman born into both the Pearl beer and Pace Foods families alive long enough to see through her final project, a permanent home for her art collection.”

Ideas for the building design came to her in a dream, the magazine reported, and – having skill in drawing and materials ready at her bedside – she drew sketches and provided them to the architect. About a decade after her death, the building was realized. How much the final structure hewed to the dream-images is impossible to know, at least for those of us standing at the base of the concrete walls years later.

I arrived just as the museum opened at 10 in the morning. I’d been encouraged to make an online “appointment” before coming, so I did. Would crowding be an issue at this free museum? Well, no. During my first few minutes there, I was the only visitor. Everyone else worked there, and there weren’t that many of them. It was a little weird being in a gallery in which the employee’s (or volunteer’s) only job is to watch you, except pretend they aren’t really watching you.

Never mind, the entrance asks one and all to “be amazing.” I made a self-portrait.

Be amazing. That’s a tall order. Better to be “interesting” or maybe “remarkable” on a really good day. Much of the artwork inside is at least interesting. A few pieces I’d say were even remarkable, but nothing amazed me much. Maybe I’m jaded.

Actually, this rectangle o’ river rubbish was mildly amazing.

“Riverbank” (2006), by Luz Maria Sanchez of Mexico City. Made from clothing, bags, bottles etc. found in the Rio Grande. Behind it is “Mobile Home II” (2006) by Mona Hatoum, a Lebanese artist living in London. Its items are connected to laundry lines slowly pulled back and forth by small electric motors.

This one I found remarkable. “Ultimate Joy” (2001) by American artist Jim Hodges. A light bulb artist, at least for this work.

“View of Gorge” (1999) by Anne Chu, an American artist (d. 2016).

Outside is a sculpture garden with three pieces – one of which seemed to be removed for now. No matter, one of the remaining ones is an impressive pile: “5000 lbs. of Sonny’s Airplane Parts, Linda’s Place, and 550 lbs. of Tire-Wire” (1997) by Nancy Rubins.

A final comment on the building itself. Maybe not the color I’d have chosen, though it’s an interesting one. Why aren’t more concrete structures one color or another? Is it too expensive compared with plain dirty white? Imagine how many ugly concrete structures would be a little less ugly with a dash of color.

The National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial

Posted on October 15, 2023 by admin

It’s mid-October and in Chicago at least, that means Open House Chicago, which we’ve attended most years over the last decade. We’ve visited churches, synagogues, temples, office space, libraries, factories, theaters, museums and more as part of the event. Open House is a worldwide phenomenon.

Rain fell heavily Friday night, and was forecast to last into Saturday morning – which it did, also obscuring whatever partial eclipse was above the clouds. The weather didn’t stop us from going out, though it did slow us down some, since driving in the city is like driving through glue even in the best conditions. To make things easier, I decided to head into the neighborhoods east from O’Hare – relatively accessible from our suburb – and on to Lakeview near Lake Michigan, as familiar as a neighborhood can be in Chicago, since we used to live there.

Our first stop was west of Lakeview, however, in the much less familiar Lincoln Square. It was still rainy and quite windy when we arrived at the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which I hadn’t known about till I saw it on the Open House List.

The weather discouraged outside photos, but I did manage to capture the mural on the side of the museum building, which faces west on Lawrence Ave.

“Cambodian Color” (2017) by Brandin Hurley and Shayne Renee Taylor.

A detail near the museum entrance, and out of the rain.

It’s a small museum, only a few rooms, but enough to provide some testimony and images about the Cambodian genocide – the evacuation of Phnom Penh, forced collectivization, blunt-instrument murders to save ammunition, Tuol Sleng and other death prisons, the Khmer Rouge turning on itself when an agrarian utopia mysteriously didn’t appear — the whole horrorshow of ideology gone barking mad. A somber place to visit, but that should be an element in one’s wanderings.

One of the docents, a young woman I took to be an American of Cambodian ancestry, asked me if I knew anything about the period. Unfortunately, I do. Not unfortunate that I know, but that there was anything to know. I remember reading reports of mass murders in “Democratic Kampuchea” while the Khmer Rouge was still in power and of course after its overthrow, when much more detail came out. I told her simply yes, that I’d heard of it.

The memorial is in the back room of the museum.

Not really visible unless you look very closely is Khmer script up and down the glass panels. A lot of it, in other words. Names.

“Designed within an environment for quiet contemplation utilizing glass, stone, water, and light effects, the memorial includes the individual names of thousands of relatives lost by Cambodians all over the United States,” the museum web site says.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Public Art