Experiencing Omaha

Somewhat to my surprise, I was in Omaha for 2 and a half days a short while back.  I just have to say Omaha was never on my radar as a place I planned to visit.  Nonetheless, I tried to make the most of it.  I found that there is an art museum there: the Joslyn.  Even better, they had a special exhibit running on American Modernism, which featured a number of paintings on loan from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which is one of the great art museums in America.  So I rearranged my schedule a bit to make sure I had time to make a visit.

One nice aspect of Omaha, not dissimilar to Regina or Saskatoon, is that the airport is a very short ride from the city center.  I think it was a 15 minute trip.  I did find the architecture in Omaha kind of awful -- either completely bland or a concrete brutalism left over from the 70s.  The streets were really wide and not terribly suitable for pedestrians and certainly not cyclists.  On the walk over to the museum, I saw multiple statues of pioneer wagons, cowboys and buffalo (so many buffalo!).  However, these were not treated ironically, and it was all a bit much. 

Despite the wide streets, there was a bit of a traffic jam.  It turned out that the cause of the problem was people coming in for a matinee of Mama Mia!  Overall, my first impressions left me with a sense that Omaha was incredibly square and not a place I would ever feel at home.

The art museum was a welcome change, not least because there was an ironic statue of a pioneer wagon in the sculpture garden.

Admission to the museum was free with a very reasonable surcharge for the special exhibit.  I knew a few of the pieces from the Brooklyn Museum reasonably well, particularly the O'Keeffe and the Stuart Davis, but quite a few seemed new to me and might well not be things that come out of storage all that often.  All the more reason to take a second and third look at the paintings, which I did.  I don't have any pictures of the special exhibit, but here is a Dale Chihuly piece they have hanging near the gift shop.

Even this museum had a bit too much Western art for my taste, but they did have a few nice pieces here and there.

Veronese, Venus at Her Toilette, 1580s

Claude Monet, The Meadow, 1879

Jackson Pollock, Galaxy, 1947

However, there was one major flaw and that is that inside the special exhibit they pointed visitors to a gallery with more American modernism of the 1950s and 60s, such as another Stuart Davis painting.  However, this was closed for re-installation of various paintings throughout the entire last month of the special exhibit.  Unbelievably shoddy planning.  And this is almost certainly the set of galleries that I would have liked the most at the Joslyn, so that was very disappointing indeed.  The likelihood of me going back is very small.

Anyway, this is what I missed out on, among other things.

Stuart Davis, American Painting, 1932-51

George Segal, Times Square at Night, 1970

The Segal is particularly bitter pill to swallow, as the one in Montreal is also in storage and I think even the one in the Albright-Knox was not on view.  I'm having a bit of trouble remembering the last Segal sculpture I've seen in person.  Might it be the bed sculpture in the Art Institute of Chicago?  I see that there is an impressive installation in the National Gallery of Canada, which I may visit this summer, but certainly there is no guarantee it is on view at all.  It is a complete unknown if the AGO will put The Butcher Shop back on display (I vaguely remember seeing it back in the 90s) since they seem to be completely downplaying their (US) modern art collection in favor of fairly bland European art by mostly second-rate artists.  I know I've never seen Segal's Execution which is owned by the Vancouver Art Gallery, but this is supposedly going on display in the fall, so who knows if I will get out there for work.

At any rate, I really am disappointed in their poor planning, and it kind of did spoil the visit.

Another thing that was a huge disappointment, though one that would take more effort to rectify, is how lame it is that they have this park behind the Convention Center along the Missouri River but there is no easy way to access it.  You literally have to walk roughly a mile out of the way to go under the highway (elevated at this point) to connect up with the park.  Truly appalling planning.  Once you are in the park it is fine, and there is even a pedestrian bridge over to Council Bluffs, Iowa, but getting there is a real problem.  It was just one more missed opportunity for Omaha.  That pretty much covers the trip.  I'll be surprised if I make it back, but I suppose never say never.  I never expected to make it out to Salt Lake City either, but I was there in 2005.  You just never know.