Gallery Work

Caught the fire just right this morning, about three, when I got up to pee, but then I couldn't get back to sleep, then did, and overslept, got to the museum an hour late. Everyone was thrilled to see me, and actually surprised that I'd made it in to work. We exchanged cold weather stories. The painting crew is almost done, at least a week ahead of schedule, and the main gallery looks great. I've got to patch and repair the upstairs galleries, then ride herd on the floor and carpet cleaning crew, then install three shows, though one of them is very small, and we'll have a gala opening the first week of February. I'd been gone for a few days, so I had the usual chores to take care of today, then lunch at the pub with TR. They had a very good Maryland Crab Chowder (I'll have it again tomorrow, so a chowder is off the list for next weekend) and it was nice to visit with TR. My social skills are eroding and there's nothing to be done about it. Charlotte asked me today about working up a talk on landscape painting, because we're doing a big landscape show, and I told her I could probably do that. Two books and a week, I can talk about anything for an hour. I could tie it in with the Carter Collection, make the Andrew Wyeth connection, talk about the Regionalists and tie that into the Hudson River School. Need to check with Mark about what his talk is going to be about, no reason to overlap, as there is plenty of material. Ten years ago there's no way I would have imagined giving a talk on the art of the landscape, now it seems perfectly normal. Darren called, cell-phone, from his car, going somewhere, and we chatted like school-girls; I picked his brain about the light-bulb situation. The museum spends more than a thousand dollars a year on light-bulbs, maybe twice that, I've got to crunch the numbers. I don't actually see the fox, but her tracks are everywhere; they allow me reprieve on the walk up the hill, because I can stop and study them. Dainty and precise. She seems as distracted as me. Verve off the beaten track to smell something foreign, check; go out of your way to piss on a particular plant, check; sit on a stump and watch the last halo of light at 5:45, check. I pass muster, but barely.