Dayton Art Institute...

I'm in Dayton, Ohio for a few days and wasted no time checking out some of the interesting things around the city. Wikipedia lists the Dayton Art Institute as one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States. Founded in 1919, and moved to a new building in 1930, it contains more than 20,000 objects spanning 5,000 years.

Initially, walking through the first corridor had drawings on the walls that looked like they were done by school kids and not professional artists. I had a feeling of 'I could do this shit' but it wasn't until 30 minutes of moving from room-to-room that the 'real' artwork started to appear and some really amazing paintings, sculptures and artifacts were on display. Most of the works were behind glass, some had railings as a reminder not to touch, some were in pedestals with acrylic covers so you can walk around and see the work from all views.

Photos were permitted as long as you didn't use a flash. The problem I found was surrounding lighting reflections in the protective glass often obscure the things I wanted to photograph and moving the camera to an angle where the reflections were minimized distorted the view so it was nearly a waste.

For me, the most impressive painting was called 'woman of the directory 1883' by American artist Charles Sprague Pearce who was active in France. From 4 feet away it had photo-like qualities. I Googled the name and there's a company AllPainter selling reproductions of his work for a few hundred dollars.



More later~~