New Museum

The SAMA Docents went on a field trip this week. They took a bus to Austin and saw the new Blanton Museum on the UT campus. It is a great building-stunningly high ceilings and large exhibit spaces. They have a wonderful collection of contemporary art (much of donated by the late James Michener and his wife)-huge pieces and several installations. They also have a huge print collection and European Art. We had a docent-led tour of the museum, and they let us in for free, which was great. If you want to see a lot of modern and contemporary art in one place, this is it. We spent about 2 hrs. there and then got back on the bus to go to lunch.

We were headed for the Capitol Grill, and we drove for about 10 minutes. It turns out the Capitol Grill is in the basement of the Capitol Building-there's no street level entrance. You have to go into the Capitol building and then find the elevators to the basement. We had been driving around looking for the street entrance.... The bus parked across the lawn from the building and we got out and trooped over to the entrance. At that moment, a huge thunderstorm broke right over our heads... We made it safely to the building and walked the rather intimidating halls to the rotunda and found the elevators. Nice cafeteria, with many food stations. Pleasant lunch and good company.