bob tarantino

J.Pan

Readers! You've not disappointed me in the past with travel advice, so it's time again for me to impose on you.  I, and a very close friend of mine, are planning to travel to Japan in the fall.  Being past the point where wandering around a foreign land without having the faintest clue of how to speak the language or find anything remains charming, I'm thinking of booking one of those guided tours (like, say, this or this).  So - does anyone have any experience with any guided tours in Japan?  Can anyone recommend or discourage one provider over another?  Any info would be much appreciated.

Pictures and Glass

Checked out the Ansel Adams/Alfred Eisenstaedt Two Photographers. Two Visions. exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario yesterday, and it's worth the visit - at least the Adams portion (which is by far the larger) is worth the time.  I only possess a "I know what I like" critical appreciation for photography, but the pairing of these two by the AGO (the Adams portion of the show is on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) seems to endow Eisenstaedt with a bit more significance than he merits - at least judging by the quality of the prints shown here, Eisenstaedt's work is... rather pedestrian.  Yes, I get that that may be the point.  Perhaps Eisenstaedt suffers from the imposed banality of the pioneer: once his technical and compositional innovations have been adopted by everyone else, whatever his contribution was becomes impossible to discern.  Of course, perhaps I'm an entirely uneducated mook and I'm missing the whole point when it comes to his stuff.

Anyways, the confluence of museums and photographs reminded me of something I've been meaning to post about: the Corning Museum of Glass.  On December 21, 2006, I mentioned that I would be undertaking a road trip to New York City in the near future, and asked if anyone had any recommendations for things to see in upstate New York State along the way.  One helpful reader suggested a trip to the Corning Museum of Glass - which, since it's approximately half way between Toronto and NYC, seemed perfect.

And it was - for anyone who is ever in the Corning/Ithaca/Binghamton area, I highly recommend taking part of a day to check out the Museum of Glass.  This is one of my favourite pieces in the collection:

The facility is brand new and beautiful, and among the thousands of well-displayed pieces in the collection, which covers glass-making from its origins in the Middle East, through Roman, Islamic, Renaissance, Baroque, American and modern iterations are some breathtaking examples of glass as both a functional and decorative art form.  The Museum website recommends setting aside at least three hours to properly view the exhibits, and that seems about right - in addition to the exhibits themselves, the glass-making demonstration, scientific displays and even the gift shop reward attention.

The Museum of Glass is also one of the only museums I've ever been to which allows you to freely photograph whatever the hell you want.  I've set up a separate photo album here for anyone interested in checking out the pictures I took.  A couple of notes on the photographs: the batteries ran out before I reached the "modern" portion of the galleries, so to see some of the most innovative stuff, you'll just need to visit the damn place; I was having a hell of a time figuring out the proper settings to get good shots since the lighting was wreaking havoc with the flash, and most of the exhibits have panes of plexiglass in front of them; and a bunch of the shots in the photo album are poorly focused (that plexiglass thing again), but the colour effects of the pieces were more important than detail, so I've included them anyways.

Since our charter here mandates that a portion of our content be devoted to legal education, I should also point out something which may (should?) strike some lay readers as incredibly odd: most of the pictures in the photo album of modern works constitute infringements of copyright - having reproduced a piece of art in its entirety, the picture itself has violated the copyright of the artist in his or her work.  Ponder that.

Items which you may wish to keep an eye for among the pictures: the glass slipper; the Tiffany window; and the good-looking guy I happened to photograph while he, coincidentally, was also taking a picture.  Hah.

Oh, and yes, all of the pieces you see in the photo album are made out of glass.  Including the slugs.  Go figure.

Road Trippin'

Readers!  You're a well-travelled bunch.  So, let's imagine for a moment that you are going to be driving from Toronto to New York City, with one overnight stop along the way.  Let's imagine further that you're planned route takes you through the Binghamton/Ithaca area, and in all likelihood that's the general area where you expect to stay for the one night.  Any recommendations on things to see, places to go, food to eat on the way?  Interior upstate New York isn't a region I'm terribly familiar with, so any suggestions would be most welcome.