My friend Manny Schöngut told me about a retrospective show of the artist Joan Mitchell, not Joni, that he was seeing in San Francisco. I love her. (You can see more about her work here but it in no way can feel the way seeing it in person feels). She is an underrated and overlooked artist who, while she had success in her lifetime did not get the recognition that her contemporary, fellow abstract expressionists, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock did. People dismissed her work as too feminine which really annoys me. So when he told me about the show I thought maybe I’d take a trip out to San Fran to see it. But the show was nearing the end of its run and moving on to Baltimore. So I thought, OK, Baltimore. That was back in September or something. The show opened last Sunday. I made a date in my calendar back then hoping that I’d figure out how to do it.
In the meantime, not knowing exactly where Baltimore is, OK, sure it’s somewhere near New York or possibly Boston, I concocted a scheme to include a visit to some friends out there. One in State College, PA, home to Penn State and the Nittany Lions. Another in Carlisle, PA home to Molly Pitcher, not that I knew that at the time. Arranging it was not as easy as it sounds for various reasons I won’t bore you with. But I joined the Baltimore Art Museum so that I could get a timed entry on the opening day. OMG. It was so fabulous.
More on Baltimore in a sec.
