Tag Archives: Museum

Sep16

An adventure in Northern Ireland – The Drive

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Sunday, 17-Nov-2024


I knew that Belfast was important!

I mean, okay. Capital of Northern Ireland, major Irish City, lots of history. Yeah, there’s lots of reasons that it’s important. Obviously.

But it’s where they built the Titanic! It’s where they launched the Titanic!

It’s where there’s a MUSEUM TO THE TITANIC!


Thankfully, Andrea was incredibly aware of this fact – and thus, when we discussed traveling to Northern Ireland, she made absolutely sure that we were heading to visit said museum.

It’s been a while since I was in that phase that every young boy seems to go through, where I was obsessed with the Titanic… but even so. Seeing the museum, the launches, the historic artifacts and memorabilia. The quotes, and the transcripts from the radio messages sent between Titanic and Olympic.

I cried a bit.

I cried a bit, and I don’t feel bad about that for a single instant.

Sep8

Musée Magritte Museum

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Thursday, 01-Aug-2024


In my last post, I mentioned that the Brussels art museum is split into multiples, which let me focus in on the specific type that I enjoy most – Older, historic paintings, primarily landscapes with pretty lighting. Well, next door to that one was a museum that’s more focused on surrealism… specifically that of René Magritte.

It’s named the Musée Magritte Museum.

Which… I’m pretty sure is an inaccurate translation by Google, since I’m like 90% sure that just translates to “museum Magritte museum”. This is the future, though, and so I cede my expectations to the whims of our AI overlords, and I’m just gonna dive right into pictures from the museum.


So… yeah.

I went through this one pretty quickly. I was already fairly saturated with museuming after the primary art museum, surrealism isn’t really my thing, and… well, it’s a museum dedicated completely to a single artist, and that gets a little bit dull after the first five rooms.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m in awe of the cultural impact that he had! And some of the paintings were really cool! But… yeah.

Also – you may note, dear readers, that “Son of Man”, the painting of the guy in a suit with an apple over his face? Clearly showing that René just wasn’t feeling like painting faces that day? It’s not here.

Nope. Nowhere in the museum. I fact, it’s owned by a private collector who (as far as I can tell) remains nameless. Neat.

Sep3

The Brussels Comic Book Museum

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Wednesday, 31-July-2024


Brussels is a city of comic strips.

All across the city there’s murals large and small, on building corners and alleyways and walls and blank spaces. Many are homages to various famous Belgian comic strips, most that I don’t recognize, but all of which I appreciate for the warmth and color that they bring to the city.

There’s even a whole museum dedicated to them – one that, of course, I made a major point to include in my adventures!


While it was under construction, the fun of the museum wasn’t dimmed in the slightest – It was quite warm, I’ll admit, but I powered through the sweltering heat to appreciate the view into the European side of comics.

It was really neat – definitely a very different view of comics than I’d seen before. Focused on more older comics, with literally nothing pertaining to super heroes or even a veiled reference to “golden age” or “silver age” from the United States. This museum, unsurprisingly, focused on Belgian comics – but also discussed the various genres and overarching ideas of comics.

It was definitely interesting, but I feel that it lost out on quite a bit of important context by ignoring the world as a whole, in favor of one small subset. Art is always influenced by itself, and I’d have loved to learn how European comics were influenced by American artists, and vice versa… I still enjoyed it, though, and left with more knowledge in my mind (and quite a few more questions that I enjoyed learning about on my own!).