Boston Trip: Part Three

Part Two

Day 4

This was my last day in Boston, so I decided I wanted the food of my people.

Dragon-kin, of course.

Afterward, my friend got some discount tickets to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Art Museum, so we decide to go check that out. (I really like art museums.)

Early-morning view of the park near the place I stayed.

This train screeched like a tortured banshee. Still brought us exactly where we needed to go, though.

The Massachusetts College of Art and Design had some cool art and design elements to it.

Inside the museum, we found one of the funniest old-timey quotes I've ever seen: "My dear Mrs. Gardner, If I may without indecency(?) be permitted to employ a strictly colloquial expression, -- 'Hooray!'".
I haven't had to ask for permission like that since prison.

Another great quote: "When the haughty New Yorkers come here and ask with an aristocratical sneer whether we have any pictures in our Museum as good as the Marquand Collection, we shall say -- casually -- 'oh yes -- we have the best Botticelli in America -- would you like to look at it?' And we shall watch them wilt and slink away."

Here's some actual art.

I found these derpy horse faces mildly amusing.

This analysis of the Botticelli pictured above was especially thought-provoking with its questions about the role of violence and women in art, especially when considered in the historical context of the time. It reminded me of all the reasons why art is so important. We make art because it changes us. It moves and inspires us. It allows us to share our most intense and significant emotions with the people around us. It is a conduit to our souls.

This garden was phenomenal. It was designed to be four-seasonal, meaning its flora changes as the seasons change.

Sadly, most items in the Chinese Room had been auctioned off, but there was still this interesting piece.

Nearby was this piece. Note the shift to a more distinctive, modern style. This one was done by American artist Joan Jonas. One of my favorite pieces at the museum. It speaks for itself.

It was part of this whole collection of pieces. The museum had a fellowship program where an up-and-coming artist would live there for a few months and make art, which was very cool. We were lucky we got to see this specific collection.

Another example of the sharp contrast between two styles.

Another of my favorite pieces. This picture does a bad job of capturing it, but the boy's face is rendered near-photorealistically, while the rest of the painting is more blurred, making his expression pop out of the canvas. The light in his eyes makes him look alive.

A profile view of the garden better shows its grandiosity. Imagine just casually having one of these in your house.

13 works of art were stolen from this place in 1990. They are still missing.

This is a weird face. I wonder if the guy whose face this face is based on had a weird face. Or maybe he had a normal face, and the artist -- maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally -- represented his normal face as a weird face. Or maybe there wasn't a guy at all, and the artist just made a weird face. Whatever the case may be, it's still a weird face.
Well, fine, it's not that weird of a face. But it's still kind of a weird face.

We were lucky enough to be in this room at the same time a very knowledgeable woman was telling the story behind all the tapestries, so I had her explain them to me. This is part of a collection telling the legend of Cyrus the Great, King of Persia. In this first one, Cyrus' father hears a prophecy that Cyrus will overthrow the kingdom, so the father tells one of his generals to execute Cyrus (foreground). The general doesn't listen and lets Cyrus run free (background). All of the tapestries had this temporal evolution from foreground to background. It was an fascinating storytelling technique. Also, it really looks like that guy on the right is holding a frisbee in his left hand.

When I first saw this painting, I said to my friend, "Imagine being this random guy and sitting still for several hours so the artist could do a portrait of you. Must've taken forever. Joke's on him though, because I could do the same thing right now in about two seconds with my phone." He looked at the room guide and told me it was actually a self-portrait, so I was like, "Oh, so he was actually painting this at the same time he was looking at himself, that's pretty cool." Later, we found out it was a Rembrandt, to which I responded, "Holy shit, this is one of the most impressive works of art I've ever seen. Look at the incredible shading work done on the left shoulder..."

These swing-out panels create an intimate fireplace face-to-face in an otherwise massive room. When your house is massive and also an art museum, you need to find ways of making it a 'lil more cozy.

This dude looks familiar. Where have I seen them before...?

Oh, right.

We exit through the gift shop, because art is fundamentally subjective. There were like 15 different journals with different covers. I took a picture of this one, then asked my friend to guess which one I took a picture of. He got it right on the first try.
(We also got each other the same Christmas present one year, so we're pretty in sync.)

More graffiti art. This one was just outside of a Thai place where we had dinner.

There are some pretty lights hung up on the trees I failed to get a good picture of, so you get a blazing red stoplight instead.

This is an ice cream shop we went to after dinner. The bathroom lighting looked extremely green for some reason.

My friends and I parted Weis around here. An overhead view of the city at night was still on my checklist, so I finally made it to the Prudential building pictured above.

I liked the building's logo. Sleek, elegant, cyberpunk-dystopian.

It's pretty much impossible to describe to you how much I loved the following four pictures, so I'll settle for laconic, low-quality descriptions instead.

Nighttime Boston in all its splendor, from 50 stories above the ground. Mmm.

Neighborhoods

Streets like veins and arteries

Water

At the skyview area, they had this section called "Dreams of Freedom: Boston's Immigrant Experience." As an immigrant myself, it got me pretty emotional.

They had this faux game show where you answer questions on the citizenship test to see if you could become an American. As someone who took the actual test last summer, I thought it'd be pretty easy. My podium malfunctioned, causing me to finish last (by somehow voting for "Christmas" as the only holiday that was NOT a national US holiday.)

This simple sign got me a little choked up. It triggered all sorts of wonderful memories: My immigrant friend telling me how much she loved this country; the guy who officially administered my citizenship test looking me in the eye and saying, "this country needs more people like you"; my parents' dream of a better life fully realized. Our family still celebrates the anniversary of our arrival to the US each year.

The US is a nation of immigrants, and we are stronger for it. I hold to that with all of my conviction.

Imagine taking the massive gamble of putting your whole life in a wooden crate and sailing across a vast ocean, having that gamble pay off, and dying knowing that your decision to emigrate was directly responsible for the future security and well-being of your children.

One last pic of the library after I left.

Oh, almost forgot: MIT was my dream school when I was young, so I bought this shirt at the Prudential mall. Which was incredibly fake, because not only do I not go to MIT, but I also didn't even buy the shirt at the university; I bought it at some random stall in the middle of a heavily commercialized mall. Still looks great, though.

And there you have it! The full chronicles of my journey through Boston. Overall, I would rate this trip a 5-star, 10/10, A+ experience. Probably the best vacation I've ever been on. Subscribe to my YouTube channel.