My tea says "a relaxed mind is a creative mind"

One of the things I like best about my relationship with El Hombre is that he appreciates art and museums as much as I do. The last few weeks have been stressful, and so last Saturday we took the afternoon and went downtown to the Miami Art Museum and the South Florida Historical Museum. It was nice to be able to wander through both, though they are so different.

I love MAM. I do. I think it's fantastic. The exhibits are good, but I also loved being able to silently wander throughout the space, pass by a piece, then turn and look at it from another angle, without the hustle and bustle you get in the Wynwood galleries. I like being able to pause and look at what is being presented without being bumped into, hustled through.

There are currently three exhibitions at MAM. My favorite was probably A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child. If you are following the flow of the museum, this is the first one you wander through, and it has four headless mannequins, dressed in vintage garb on bicycles with propellers. I don't quite know what it is that drew me back to this exhibit, but I loved it. I wish I had been able to take pictures. The mannequins were obviously a family, father, mother, daughter and son. It embraced our obsession with flying, and with technology.

The next exhibit, and my second favorite, was Objects of Value. My roommate, the ragin cajun, has told me about this exhibit before, and I always thought it sounded interesting, though it could come off as really interesting. It's a bold statement on how humanity is obsessed with assigning everything a unit of value, even cubic space. One of the pieces struck me because I think an artist at Wynwood took inspiration from it. The piece is a neatly piled "rug" of crystals, with a real diamond in the midst.

The final exhibit is on the second floor of MAM. It's Moving Through Space and Time. The collection is a series of documentaries, and admittedly, it's hard for me to watch these things because when I am in "museum mode" I like to walk around and come back to each piece. But the presentation of the documentaries is interesting. Most of them take place in countries that have been rife with unrest, whether it's Eastern Europe, Mexican border towns or the Middle East. You would walk through rooms with TVs playing the same documentary, but in different parts. That was interesting because it messed with my perspective (in terms of vision.)

I loved the museum, I will definitely go back again, as their exhibits will be changing soon. And also, the gift shop is super super awesome. Which I appreciate.

I would definitely recommend making a day of the Miami-Dade Cultural Center. I will continue with the Historical Museum in another post because this one is getting rather long (sorry Rick)