Hartford City Hall

Hartford City Hall has a stately three-story hall.  The art changes from time to time to time.  I don't remember who did the works on the left.  They look like a Rorschach test to me.

Holocaust Memorial

This is the Holocaust Memorial, a 1981 sculpture by Elbert Weinberg.  It depicts two strong arms holding a shofar (horn) aloft.  It stands outside the Jewish Community Center on the West Hartford-Bloomfield line.

I have taken more photos of this sculpture than I care to admit.  In the morning, in the afternoon.  In the summer, in the fall.  Cloudy days and sunny days.  From one side, from the other.  I have never got an image that I like enough to put on this blog.


Do you have something that just won't let you get a decent photograph?

How Much Should a State Pay to Create a Job?

The State of Connecticut is going to give Jackson Laboratory $291 million to construct a genetics laboratory next to the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington (shown above).  As I understand it, the laboratory will do cancer research by studying mouse genetics.

The Governor of Connecticut brags that this will produce 850 construction jobs.  (You could create 850 construction jobs cheaper by hiring 425 workers to dig holes and 425 to fill them in.)  The State and Jackson project that it will produce 660 research-related jobs over 15 - 20 years.  (Yes, that was years, not months . . . how good are you predicting what will happen next week, much less what will happen in 2027 - 2032?)  Of those, 320 jobs are projected for the first ten years.  But, the $291 million the state is paying will be wasted paid up front.

Jackson says they will kick in $809 million to the total $1.1 billion cost of the project.  Jackson will get its share from federal grants (i.e., from us), philanthropy (i.e., rich and dumb us) and service income (I'll believe it when I see it).

I have houses in Connecticut and Southwest Florida.  Last year Florida told Jackson Laboratory to take a hike and I cheered.  This year they showed up in Connecticut but, unfortunately, the Governor bought the fairy tale story.

Don't get me started on the 9.4 mile busway from Hartford to New Britain for $567 million  . . .

Monochrome

These are from Florida.  Bonita Springs has an excellent outdoor art show.   There was loads of color, of course, but sometimes the absence of color caught my attention.

NBMAA Week: Lips

The last post this week from the New Britain Museum of American Art is a detail of an over-sized (30" x 40"), digitally manipulated photograph on metal by the Israel-born artist, Drew Tal. 

"Porcelain Promises" (2008) is a pair of photographs of a Chinese man and woman, executed in the style of old ancestral paintings.  They are a recent acquisition of the museum.

NBMAA Week: Pan of Rohallion

Frederick MacMonnies apprenticed with the American sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, in the early 1880s.  Saint-Gaudens urged MacMonnies to study in Paris, so he went there in 1884.  MacMonnies was very successful in France for decades, winning many prizes and commissions.  His figures were often nudes, designed for outdoor placements. 

MacMonnies returned to America shortly after World War I broke out. His nudes were more controversial in the United States.

NBMAA Week: Solon Borglum

Solon Borglum was a noted sculptor of frontier life, primarily cowboys and native Americans.  This statue is Sioux Indian Buffalo Dance, from 1902.  It stands at the approach to the New Britain Museum of American Art's first floor hallway gallery.  On the wall behind it are Currier & Ives prints from a current exhibition.