Recharging my creative battery on my 40th

This weekend was our 40th Anniversary -- we married at 20 and 22.  We had a limited time to travel, and Baltimore is both far enough and close enough to be a good choice: far enough to not seem totally ridiculous  to spend money to stay the night; and close enough to not be exhausted by the travel to and from there.

Saturday was a day to recharge our physical batteries.  We chose a place where we could have fun and eat without having to go out if we didn't want to do that.  That was fortunate because the weather after we arrived turned wild, and because we were even eating at the hotel, we saw the rain and wind as a source of entertainment, not a cause for concern.

Then, on our anniversary, we went to the Baltimore Museum of Art.  I love that place, and it is much less well known than Baltimore's Walters Museum.  What I like about the BMA is that it has a number of wonderful collections within it -- including a surprisingly good collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.  They were largely donated by the two Cone sisters from Baltimore. They were friends of Gertrude Stein who were turned on to collecting by Gertrude.  Since they didn't have children, they donated their whole collection to the BMA.  Sort of contemporary with the Cone sisters was another Baltimore woman, Saidie Adler May. She amassed and donated a smaller, but also impressive, Post-Impressionist collection that she apparently selected to complement the Cones' collection.  These women's gifts allowed Baltimore to have a wonderful public art museum -- a real treat to find outside of New York, DC, Chicago, and the West Coast's big cities.  

The only disappointment of the day was that the space housing the collection with the museum's most modern pieces is under renovation, so we couldn't see those works.  Even so, just being surrounded by art like that always helps charge my creative batteries.  Not a bad way to spend an anniversary.  Go to  the web to see the photo journal I made on our iPad  to see pictures we took at the BMA (and other places) on that iPad. If you click on any picture in the journal, you'll also be able to see the pictures in a slide show format.

P.S.  If you've never been to the BMA, I'd recommend it.