According to my last post, you haven't heard from me here in two and a half weeks. Logically, that should mean that I have some crazy and exciting stories to tell, right? Unfortunately, I can't remember half of them right now! Maybe when I'm not concussed I'll have more to share.
yes, you read that right, I have a concussion. I remember taking a break from writing my project for class to go upstairs and listen to music with the guys. I even remember headbanging to a metal/dubstep song that came on. I just don't remember when that headbanging caused a chair to become violent with my right eyebrow. According to accounts from the others, I was a pretty gruesome sight last night. Fortunately, the gash has healed a bit and is minimally blended with my eyebrow, but my head is pretty blurry right now.
Anyway, I guess I'll share a few stories that I can remember. Monday we went to the Accademia to hear a few lectures on women and art. While our stay was interrupted by the test we had in Italian class, it was still a great chance to see Michelangelo's David without the crowd that I'm sure is typically surrounding it. The lecture we heard wasn't bad, though it was difficult to try to translate it when I only know half the words she was saying. The main point I got out of it was that she is definitely a first-wave feminist.
Wednesday was another day, another art exhibit. This time it was a modern exhibit at an art school! The exhibits were designed with Giorgio Vasari, a painter, architect, and historian who was born five hundred years ago. His biographies of Italian artists are famous for being a kind of start to art history, as well as an extremely valuable resource in the field. The exhibit (whose artists we got to meet) was set up in the classrooms. A brief rundown of the exhibits: a photo installment featuring images of Florence, the frame of a house with videos of deteriorating things and an explosion of household items suspended by string, a video projected onto hanging sheets of a victorian woman holding lilies while paper lilies surround the projection, and Bill Viola's "Acceptance" -- a video of a woman being sprayed by water from behind as she goes through a metaphorical life from birth to death. the other part: more cool installments and a lot of paintings.
After seeing the exhibits, we got to go downstairs to see their printing presses from 1860 and 1862 -- the years before and after Italy unified. I thought that was pretty cool. The presses were pretty cool to see in person, too.
Our trip on Thursday took us to an exhibit for which we've been seeing the signs all over Florence: Denaro e Bellezza. Money and beauty. Because usury was banned by the Church, bankers couldn't charge interest on their loans. This led them to engage in a system of trading which would then allow them to earn a profit when goods were sold and resold. That was the theme of the exhibit, and it was very beautiful and probably worth a pretty penny. Among other things we saw many artifacts including florins (the money of the time), a very intricately designed ivory comb, and some of the cloth that would have been used in the aforementioned trade system. There were also some pretty pictures that included Botticelli's Venus and a number of representations of the historic burning of Savonarola (look it up if you haven't heard of it, it's worth knowing about).
There's another exhibit at the Palazzo Strozzi called Declining Democracy. It's free on Thursday nights, so maybe I'll tell you about it next week. I hope to, at least.
Well, I think I've written enough for now. I've been working on my project on Dante Alighieri, so maybe when that's done I'll tell you about it. Or I'll just post my essay. You want to read an essay, right? Don't worry, it's not long.
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