Apr

Virtual Traveler— See What You Can See

by Meredith Mullins on April 6, 2020

Yes, you can SEE music. Take a ride in the video below.
© DoodleChaos

At Home with Art and Culture

If you find you’re still in your pajamas at three in the afternoon, or if you have started your own bar crawl by putting a glass of wine in every room of your home, or if you have finished all of Netflix, or you have cleaned every closet … twice, STOP!

It’s time to become a virtual traveler and explore the world’s art and culture in the comfort of your home. The physical doors of arts venues are shuttered during this time of “sheltering in place,” but artistic organizations and artists are rising to the challenge.

Start by SEEING Beethoven’s 5th by Doodle Chaos, where animated line riders show you the beauty of fearless flying, flipping, and falling in rhythm, including the power of pauses between notes.

If video does not display, watch it here.

And keep going—it’s easy! Now, more than ever, the Internet brings the arts to you.

An at-home re-creation of “The Absinthe Drinker” (original on the left)
Can you name the painter?
© Erick Paraiso/John Pichel

Old Masters . . . and New

At this important moment in history, organizations are responding quickly to fill the arts community void by adding creative ideas for arts engagement to their other online opportunities.

To keep your artistic spirit alive and well, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles launched an artistic challenge that has inspired people around the world. Based on a Dutch project (Between Art and Quarantine), the museum asks you recreate an artwork from the Getty collection using whatever you can find in your confined world at home. Take a look at the Getty twitter feed or the Dutch Instagram site.

The J. Paul Getty Museum challenges you to recreate work by the masters
(for example, Van Gogh’s Irises) with things you find at home.
(Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Trust and Cara Jo O’Connell)

In addition, the Getty is providing access to art books, online exhibits, podcasts, and videos. Discover the current exhibits of Michelangelo, the Bauhaus, and Ancient Palmyra.

Virtual Visits to Museums

Although virtual museum tours were around long before the corona crisis (note that Google Arts and Culture has put more than 2,500 museum and gallery collections online), the well-known museums in the U.S. are all offering additional online culture to be enjoyed while observing your “stay-at-home” mandate. Here is a sampling.

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has temporarily closed its doors,
but has expanded its online opportunities.
© iStock/rarrarorro

New York Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art in New York presents a new virtual art experience each week, such as exhibit openings and home movies. Take a look at the schedule, which includes upcoming exhibits of Félix Fénéon, Donald Judd, and Dorothea Lange.

You can also participate in online art projects, such as coloring the tracings of Louise Lawler. Download the drawings here, and then post your finished work on social media with the tag #DrawingwithMoMA.

#DrawingwithMoma
© Meredith Mullins

New York Metropolitan Museum

New York’s Metropolitan Museum offers a range of its publications free online for a limited time, as well as a digital digest that includes videos, articles, concerts, and art-making activities for the whole family.

Washington’s National Gallery of Art: Silent for the moment
© Meredith Mullins

National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)

The National Gallery of Art has virtual tours and video introductions to the current exhibits (Degas and the Opera, Raphael, and Early European Open-Air Painting), as well as a tour of the highlights of its collection. The museum also provides lessons and activities for home study for all ages, including special resources for kids.

Time for art projects at home, inspired by the great art museums
© iStock/Pokec

National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.)

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. offers seven online exhibitions. Don’t forget to visit the popular portraits of Michelle Obama, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Eleanor Roosevelt, as you virtually tour the “First Ladies Exhibit.”

Jacqueline Kennedy from the National Portrait Gallery “First Ladies” Exhibit
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Digital art workshops are also offered free of charge, as are coloring pages of some of the famous portraits in the collection for your own artistic expression.

You’ll find virtual tours, videos, and interviews at many other museums in the U.S., including the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Boston Museum of Fine Arts (featuring Ancient Nubia and Gender Bending Fashion), High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago (featuring El Greco), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The new meditation: coloring. Try your hand at coloring a drawing of Frida Kahlo.
(Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery)

Oh I See: The Times Are Changing

In these tumultuous times, seeking solace, connection, and inspiration through arts and culture is a natural path. Unlike the current toilet paper shortage, there will always be more than enough opportunity for the virtual traveler to see the best that the world has to offer in this expanded community of visual arts.

Let the journey begin.

Stay tuned next week at OIC Moments to discover what the virtual traveler might find in the world of music and the performing arts.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Meredith Mullins 6 Comments

Art of Travel/The World's Art & Design/USA/Worldwide Sites

Dec

Holiday Wanderlust in Leipzig!

by Joyce McGreevy on December 16, 2019

People at the Leipziger Weihnachtsmarkt, the annual Christmas market in Leipzig, celebrate centuries-old German Christmas traditions. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

The Christmas Market has been a tradition in Leipzig for 600 years.
© Joyce McGreevy

**Winter is Wunderbar at Germany’s Christmas Markets**

It’s an ink-dark December morning as my sister and I board the train in Berlin. Yet our hearts are light, warmed by the promise of discovery. Winter wanderlust leads us to Leipzig’s Weihnachtsmarkt one of Germany’s oldest, biggest, and most beautiful Christmas markets!

Now popular around the world, the European tradition of the December market wasn’t always so charming. In the early Middle Ages, it was merely the last chance to stock up on supplies before hunkering down for a long, miserable winter. Visions of survival, not sugar plums, danced through one’s head in those days.

In the 1400s, markets took a festive turn. Carved wooden toys, gingerbread, and other treats began appearing among the sacks of grain and racks of farming tools.

A vendor’s stall selling pine wreaths and boughs at the Leipziger Weihnachtsmarkt, the annual Christmas market in Leipzig, reflects one of Germany’s Christmas traditions. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Baby, take a bough! The tradition of Christmas wreaths began in Germany.
© Joyce McGreevy

Martin’s Market Effect

Intentionally or not, Martin Luther also gave Germany’s Christmas markets a boost.

According to historian Erika Kohler, the 16th-century church reformer’s “rejection of the veneration of saints . . . supplanted Saint Nicholas as the giver of gifts.” As a result, the most favored day for gift-giving shifted from December 6 to Christmas Eve.

A statue of Martin Luther at a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany reminds the viewer of the church reformer’s role in shaping German Christmas traditions. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Martin Luther overlooks a Christmas Market near Berlin’s oldest church (1200s)
and the iconic TV Tower (1969).
© Joyce McGreevy

Today, Germany is home to several hundred Christmas markets—Berlin alone has more than 70. Whether you travel west to Cologne, east to Dresden, south to Munich, or points between, you’ll find a market to suit your mood.

A City of Peace and Celebration

For Carolyn and me, that’s Leipzig—the city renowned for classical music, creativity, and the beauty of its Gothic architecture.

A prosperous commercial center, Leipzig revealed even greater worth when, in October 1989, it hosted the largest peaceful protest in East Germany. Historians consider the “Peaceful Revolution” a key factor in accelerating the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

What to Our Wondering Eyes Did Appear

Half a century later, my sister and I exit the largest terminal railway station in Europe and marvel at what we see: the entire city center has been transformed into a winter wonderland.

Crowds at the Leipziger Weihnachtsmarkt reflect the wanderlust that draws people from all over the world to Germany’s Christmas markets. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Christmas markets are made for strolling, not hunting for a parking place.
Most Germans arrive by train or tram.
© Joyce McGreevy

Oh, I see: This must be how Dorothy felt when the doors of the Emerald City swung open. In Leipzig, the Weihnachtsmarkt is a world immersed in magic.

A beautifully decorated vendor’s stall filled with artisan crafts invites shoppers to take a closer look at the Leipziger Weihnachtsmarkt, one of Germany’s Christmas oldest Christmas markets. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Decorated stalls and goods for all budgets lure shoppers in Leipzig.
© Joyce McGreevy

Wooden holiday huts line every avenue and lane, each hut ornately decorated and laden with artisan goods. Forests of twinkling fir trees sprout from their rooftops. Carousel horses circle, crowds on foot flow by, and a Ferris wheel revolves above gilded spires.

A Ferris wheel’s view of the Christmas market crowds in Leipzig, Germany shows why wanderlust draws people from all over the world to celebrate this popular German Christmas tradition. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Ride the Ferris wheel to see how the holiday bustle takes over the streets of Leipzig.
© Joyce McGreevy

The air is redolent with berry-red glühwein (mulled wine), savory bratwürst, and caramelized sugar. Music fills the air, too—a busker acing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on accordion; carolers at the Old Town Hall; and trumpeters outside Thomaskirche, the church where Johann Sebastian Bach was choirmaster.

A statue of Johann Sebastian Bach in the moonlight outside Thomaskirche in Leipzig inspires wanderlust to explore more of Germany’s holiday traditions, including Bach’s Christmas cantatas. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

In Leipzig, Bach wrote choral cantatas at the rate of one a week.
Listen to a seasonal example, here.
© Joyce McGreevy

How German Christmas Traditions Crossed Cultures

Yuletide revelry has been a Leipzig tradition since 1458. Americans, by contrast, did little to “mark the day,” let alone the season, until the 1800s. Then two German immigrants changed everything. Thomas Nast is the better known, the illustrator whose images of Santa Claus became iconic.

Less known is Karl “Charles” Follen, a German refugee, Harvard professor, and abolitionist. In the 1830s, readers of a popular American magazine learned that each December Charles and his wife Eliza surprised guests with something extraordinary: a Christmas tree:

The tree was set in a tub and its branches hung with small dolls, gilded eggshells, and paper cornucopias filled with candied fruit. The tree was illuminated with numerous candles.

A Christmas tree in a red-carpeted, ornate passageway in Leipzig, Germany reflects one of the German Christmas traditions that inspire wanderlust for holiday travel. Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Leipzig’s network of courtyard passages and arcades dates back over 500 years.
© Joyce McGreevy

The spell was cast. Americans began adopting German Christmas traditions as their own, including glass ornaments, wooden nutcrackers, and . . .

An Advent wreath set against the beautiful architecture of Leipzig, Germany reflects a German Christmas tradition and inspires wanderlust for holiday travel. Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Advent wreaths and Advent calendars. In Germany, most families make their own.
© Joyce McGreevy

A giant Christmas pyramid, or Weihnachtspyramide, set against the beautiful architecture of Leipzig, Germany reflects a German Christmas tradition and inspires wanderlust for holiday travel. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Christmas pyramids. (A rotor at the top is driven by warm air from lit candles.)
© Joyce McGreevy

A travel mascot with a kinderpunsch mug and crowds enjoying gluhwein in Leipzig reflect the Germany Christmas traditions that inspire wanderlust to visit Germany’s Christmas markets. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Glühwein (mulled wine) and alcohol-free kinderpunsch. Pay a small pfand (deposit)
for the option of returning the mug or keeping a holiday souvenir.
© Joyce McGreevy

A Right Pickle

One “German” tradition may not be German at all: the Christmas pickle.

Thanks to demand among tourists, you’ll find this ornament at KaDaWe, Berlin’s massive department store. But mention the Weihnachtsgurke to most Germans and they’ll wonder what-the-dill you’re talking about.

Happily, the murky gherkin myth is our only jarring experience. In Germany’s holiday markets, food is so tasty that even our inability to pronounce certain dishes cannot stop us from trying them. My sister and I sample whatever we see—then walk 6-8 miles a day to keep it from becoming permanent souvenirs.

Waffles with vanilla cream and Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts) are popular traditional holiday foods in Leipzig, a destination that inspires wanderlust to explore Germany’s Christmas markets. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Waffles with vanilla cream are a Leipzig specialty; Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts)
are popular throughout Germany.
© Joyce McGreevy

Holiday Travel Tips

Ready to plan some Weihnachtsmarkt travel of your own? Most Christmas markets run from late November to January 5.

The Hotel Fürstenhof Leipzig is the perfect setting for a traveler with winter wanderlust, close to one of Germany’s most traditional Christmas markets, the Leipziger Weihnachtsmarkt. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Built in the 1770s, Leipzig’s Hotel Fürstenhof is the perfect place
to review your Christmas market itinerary.
© Joyce McGreevy

Pack light to save half your suitcase for holiday gifts. To stay warm without bulk, wear packable down, thermals, and stick to Berlin’s favorite fashion tone: black. Then savor the color at Germany’s Christmas markets.

Happy Wanderlust to all, and to all holiday travelers, a good flight!

A man dressed as Father Christmas, spotted among pedestrians in Leipzig, Germany reflects the fun and whimsy of German Christmas traditions. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

It’s beginning to look a lot like . . .!
© Joyce McGreevy

See video of the Leipziger Weihnactsmarkt here.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 4 Comments

Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Germany/The World's Art & Design/Travels to the Past

Oct

It’s Homecoming—at the TWA Hotel!

by Joyce McGreevy on October 28, 2019

Carolyn McGreevy stands beside a TWA Constellation, or “Connie,” an airplane at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport that evokes travel memories of Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

The TWA reunion at JFK puts a spring in the step of pilot’s daughter Carolyn McGreevy.
© Joyce McGreevy

Part 2: TWA Travel Memories Reveal Vision of Tomorrow

(Part 1, “Growing up ‘TWA’,” here.)

Heard the one about 700 people spending several days at the airport—on purpose? As storms drench New York’s JFK Airport, Trans World Airlines alumni gather for a TWA reunion, and travel memories come flooding back.

The TWA Hotel at JFK New York on a stormy night seen from the Constellation, or “Connie,” evokes travel memories of Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Not even a storm can dampen our excitement about the TWA reunion.
© Joyce McGreevy

TWA Time Machine

Amazed, my sisters and I stare at the TWA Terminal, then at each other to make sure it isn’t a dream. For 18 years, the terminal lay vacant. Now all is restored. Once more we enter the familiar tubular walkway with its cherry red carpets and marshmallow walls, reliving memories of childhood travels with our TWA pilot dad.

Three sisters arriving at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport New York for the TWA Reunion share travel memories of growing up with Trans World Airlines. (Image © Margie McGreevy)

Margie captures the moment as Joyce, Carolyn, and Erin savor a sense of homecoming.
© Margie McGreevy

Flights of Fancy

“I want the greatest airline terminal the world has ever seen and I don’t care how much it costs.”

That’s what TWA visionary Howard Hughes told Finnish designer Eero Saarinen in the late 1950s. By 1962 the architectural wonder was complete. Forty years later, TWA and the terminal shut down.

Then along came Tyler Morse.

As a boy, he’d often visited the TWA Terminal with his dad. As a developer, Morse, like Hughes and Saarinen, had a bold, blue-sky vision for the terminal and the means to carry it out. In May 2019, following a three-year, $265 million restoration, the terminal soared gloriously back to life—as the TWA Hotel.

Spotting Morse at the reunion, former TWA flight attendant Yvonne Greenwood asks why he chose this particular airline. Says Morse, “Because it’s always been the best!”

Former Trans World Airline flight attendant Yvonne Greenwood meets TWA Hotel developer Tyler Morse at JFK Airport New York during the TWA Alumni Reunion. (Image © Jim Greenwood)

High-Flying Hotel

Emulating TWA, Morse has transformed going to the airport from mere necessity into marvelous experience.

TWA Hotel’s 512 ultra-quiet guestrooms reflect retro chic and offer aviation geeks exhilarating views of JFK’s runways and the iconic TWA Flight Center.

A swimming pool becomes part of the travel memories of the TWA Hotel, JFK Airport, New York. (Image © Erin McGreevy Bevando)

A TWA Hotel swimming pool with a view of the runway and airplanes evokes Trans World Airlines travel memories at JFK Airport, New York. (Image © Erin McGreevy Bevando)

A Trans World Airlines Constellation, or “Connie,” airplane parked outside the TWA Hotel, JFK Airport NY, evokes travel memories at the TWA Reunion. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

The interior of the TWA Constellation, or “Connie,” an airplane at the TWA Hotel, JFK Airport NY, now fitted out as a cocktail bar evokes travel memories of the glamorous Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Trans World Airlines alumni flight attendant Yvonne Greenwood, TWA pilots Mike Fliniau and Ron Kleiboeker and TWA pilot’s daughters Erin Bevando, Margie Cozad, Joyce McGreevy share travel memories at the TWA Reunion. (Image © Jim Greenwood)

L to R: TWA alumni Yvonne Greenwood, Mike Fliniau and Ron Kleiboeker,
McGreevy sisters Erin, Margie, Joyce. (Carolyn must be in First Class!)
© Jim Greenwood

The restored Paris Cafe at The TWA Hotel, JFK Airport New York, evokes travel memories of Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Like Kids Again

Immersed in TWA history, my sisters and I become carefree kids again.

TWA pilot’s daughters playing dress-up at the 1962 House of the TWA Hotel, JFK Airport New York, during the TWA Reunion share travel memories of Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

McGreevy sisters dress up as 1962 housewives, a playful contrast to . . .

Helen Collins McGreevy on board a Trans World Airlines Constellation, or “Connie,” in 1958 evokes travel memories of the glamour of TWA. (Image @ McGreevy Archives/ Margie Cozad McGreevy and Joyce McGreevy)

Heavens Above

The heart of the TWA Hotel is a soaring, light-filled structure, with wing-shaped roof, fantastically vast windows, a sunken lounge, and overhead walkways.

The newly restored TWA Terminal of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport New York seen during the TWA Reunion evokes travel memories of Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

The newly restored Solari board at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport New York seen during the TWA Reunion evokes travel memories of Trans World Airlines. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

To recreate the Solari split-flap message board with authentic mechanical operation,
Morse found the original manufacturers in Udine, Italy.
© Joyce McGreevy

It All Just Clicks

“I love hearing the clicking again!” TWA alumnus Steve Bonniwell grins, recalling New Yorkers who’d gamble on which destinations the board would reveal after each round of clickety-clacks. “You’d hear someone say, ‘I think the third line will be Paris’, and then they’d bet on it!”

Trans World Airlines alumnus Steve Bonniwell attends the TWA Alumni Reunion at the TWA Hotel, JFK Airport New York. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Recalling his career with TWA, he beams. “Greatest company I ever worked for. Great people! It was a family. I spent so much time going through this terminal during my 20 years at TWA. Seeing it the way it was is unbelievable.”

Bonniwell’s family reflects the influence of the airline. Son Mark Bonniwell is a pilot, flying 737s for United Airlines.

Trans World Airlines pilot’s daughter Margie McGreevy Cozad meets former TWA pilot Derwin “Dee” Grimm at the TWA Reunion, TWA Hotel, JFK Airport New York, where they share airline travel memories. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Margie meets TWA alumnus Derwin “Dee” Grimm. In 1974, Dee flew co-pilot with our dad
to Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, Cairo, and New York.
© Joyce McGreevy

Sky’s the Limit

As a kid in Kansas City, TWA’s original headquarters, Tracy Briggs dreamed of flight. Given the family’s tight finances and Tracy’s physical challenges, Briggs’ mom worried that “such dreams were not meant for people like us.”

But Briggs persisted. “I soloed in 1977 and had so much fun I decided to make a career of it.” Today, Captain Briggs has 40 years of experience in the cockpit. A veteran of TWA, he’s now a pilot for American Airlines. “This is my life, my joy, my passion!”

As for his love? That’s Myra Briggs, the spirited woman who’s been with him every mile of the way.

Myra Briggs, former Trans World Airlines pilot Tracy Briggs, meet other TWA alumni at the TWA Reunion held at the TWA Hotel, JFK Airport New York, and share airline travel memories. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

TWA Hotel crew model TWA vintage designer uniforms. L to R: Pearls Daily in 1965 Balmain and Sarah Conrad in 1970s Valentino. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

TWA Hotel crew model TWA vintage designer uniforms. L to R: Pearls Daily in 1965 Balmain
and Sarah Conrad in 1970s Valentino.
© Joyce McGreevy

Beyond Nostalgia

Coined from ancient Greek, nostalgia combines “homecoming,” with “pain,” as if revisiting the past must always be bittersweet. But what my sisters and I witness among alumni at the TWA reunion is joy, gratitude, and zest for new adventures. No wonder everyone looks hale and hearty.

Oh, I see: The glory days of travel are not confined to travel memories, but available to all who travel through life with curiosity, appreciation, and a sense of service to one another.

The realization deepens as we meet the TWA Hotel staff. There’s something familiar about the high standards and heart they bring to their work. Something familiar about . . .

Stephanie Villada reporting for duty on her day off . . .
Gail Martin, Tony, Chelsy, and Catalina’s pride and joy at learning about—and becoming part of —TWA’s history. . .
The finesse of Chef de Cuisine Amy Sir-Trevino . . .
Sam’s warm welcome at check-in, Donna Lopiccolo’s daily greetings, and Jennifer Jacks’ seamless problem-solving.

Portraits of TWA Hotel staff, JFK Airport New York, remind sisters attending the Trans World Airlines Reunion that the future will create new memories to celebrate. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

Then it dawns on us: What we loved in the airline is now taking shape at the hotel. Beyond our personal travel memories, a promising new generation of TWA family is forming at the TWA Hotel. We wish them a sense of homecoming and a lifetime of TWA adventures all their own.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 7 Comments

The World's Art & Design/Travels to the Past/USA

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