Little escap(ad)e: Bremen and surroundings

Earlier this week I spent a few days visiting a friend in Bremen. While I was there, I made another basket, smaller this time, and with a different kind of bottom layer, but perfectly in keeping with ‘my newest quest’ that I wrote about in my last post. I enjoy making baskets, but I don’t think I will become an expert or a real or regular basket weaver.

While up there, we took the opportunity and visited the German Museum of Emigration in the port of Bremerhaven. I have never been so impressed with a museum as this one! 

A migrant's luggage in the 1920s

Uta 'on board' a migrant sailboard - it really felt as if the boat was heaving
and swaying, and we could not figure out how they managed to get this effect!

Many Germans emigrated to the US, and so part of the tour is a replica of
New York's Grand Central Station, from where they would proceed to other cities.

Perhaps it is the topic in the urgency of the current situation, perhaps it is the knowledge that at some point my paternal grandfather contemplated emigration to Brazil – what would have been, had he actually gone? And why did he not go after all, if the thought had been so serious that his children still passed on the tale many decades later? For one thing, I would not be alive, and the other thing is what does that tell me about his political standpoint in the early 1930s ... or was it merely economical...?

One evening we went to the art museum late night opening, the Kunsthalle Bremen. One entire room is currently alive with Sarah Morris’ painting Jardim Botânico , impressive,  bold and inspirational in choice of colors and shapes.

Image taken from Sarah Morris' website

Another site-specific installation in the museum is James Turrell’s Above – Between – Below, which extends over three floors of the museum and gives a different perspective on each floor, looking up, looking and and down, and looking down. 

I also took mental note of several pieces exhibited in the museum to quote for my next (pending) assignment in my online class with Jane Dunnewold. An evening very well spent!