Palace Gardens, Venice, Italy, December 25, 2015.
Wordless Wednesday: Venice
Palace Gardens, Venice, Italy, December 25, 2015.
A study in steps: Schürhof, Basel
After I took a number of photos of the hanging plant columns of the Basel Museum of Culture (during our visit at Thanksgiving), I turned my attention to the courtyard around them — the Schürhof — the floor of which is largely a set of low, wide steps descending to the museum lobby and gift shop.
The street entrance to the courtyard and thus to the museum is through a simple archway on the Münsterplatz.
Before the museum was renovated in 2011 by Herzog & de Meuron, the Schürhof* was not open to the public. The museum shared a door with the Museum of Natural Sciences around the corner.
Looking at a “before” photo (here, fourth image), the old courtyard appears to have been used at least partly as a parking lot.
The renovation excavated it to open up a new museum entrance in the base of the existing 1917 neoclassical building.
The other buildings that enclose the Schürhof are medieval.
Above and below are three views from upper windows inside the museum.
You can see a plan of the courtyard here (fifth image).
The Sunday porch: South Dakota
Pierre, South Dakota, 1940, by John Vachon, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.— Christina Rossetti, from “In the bleak midwinter“
Waterford, Ireland
Christmas tree wagon of William Power & Sons, merchants of seeds and trees. Photo taken at Waterford, Ireland, courthouse on December 16, 1929, via National Library of Ireland Commons on flickr.
There’s another good photo of this little girl (possibly a Power) and another loaded company wagon here.
To be
Brought down at last
From the cold sighing mountain
Where I and the others
Had been fed, looked after, kept still,
Meant, I knew — of course I knew —
That it would only be a matter of weeks,
That there was nothing more to do. . . .— James Merrill, from “Christmas Tree“
Hanging gardens, Basel
In Basel, Switzerland, the day after Thanksgiving, we went looking for lunch and ended up at the very pretty bistro of the Museum of Culture — located on the same square as the Münster.
The museum posters decorating the café were so interesting that we decided to go next door (above, left side) and take a look.
Given the quiet, very traditional appearance of the street entrance, we were completely surprised by what we found on the other side of the archway.
In an enclosed courtyard, seven, four-story tall columns of plants hang from the deep eave of an irregularly folded roof of glistening ceramic tiles.
The museum* is 166 years old and houses a current collection of over 300,000 ethnographic artifacts from around the world. The hanging columns were installed in 2011, part of an extensive renovation of the building by Herzog & de Meuron.
To scroll through larger versions of the photos (and several more), click on ‘Continue reading’ below and then on any thumbnail in the gallery.
Next: more about the Schürhof, the sloping courtyard below the columns.
*Admission to the Museum der Kulturen is about $16, but the last hour of the day (4:00 – 5:00 p.m.) is free. This is plenty of time to see the large room of Medieval and Renaissance art displayed there until the prestigious Kunstmuseum Basel, currently being renovated, reopens in 2016. (You can also see some of its late 19th century and early modernist art at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst or Contemporary Art until February 21, 2016. The Gegenwartskunst also has a small exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Cy Twombly until March 13. Admission is free.)
enclos*ure 