the best friday ever. plus saturday morning

Last night Melinda came home and asked if we would like to go to an exhibition opening at the Palazzo Strossi her contemporary art history teacher told her about. A resounding YESSSSSS sent us on our way, after getting museum-artsy-opening-classy ready of course. We sauntered into the palazzo feeling ever so cool and realized we were probably the only americans there, let alone the youngest people there, most were in their early 30's and up. It was awesome. They had a table set up for wine and other refreshments and a long line was forming at the opening to the exhibition. As we reached the front the ladies letting people through the line asked if we had tickets. Tickets? I said questioningly in Italian. A man came over to talk to us and I pulled the we are american students studying here in florence at SACI. LUCKILY!! He knew the president of SACI, they are apparently neighbors, and he let us in as long as I promised to tell Signora Maidoff that Leonardo from Palazzo Strossi says hello. Will do. I felt pretty cool because all of this happened in Italian. shabang! Anyway, the exhibition was called "Gerhard Richter and the Disappearance of the Image in Contemporary Art". It included several other artists as well, who had some seriously cool works (even some Americans! yay) (http://www.strozzina.org/e_index.htm) was absolutely fabulous and I had such an amazing time. I had a short but amusing conversation with an Italian man who asked if I knew Richter's work. I said a little bit and explained why I liked the piece in front of us Canaletto. He asked if I was German after that (everyone thinks Im German) and i said yes for some reason and he started speaking to me in German. Oh boy, so i had to say oh no, haha! im not german, my mistake.
My favorite works were Richter's abstract pieces (his portraits are also very well done). Im not a huge fan of his landscape/still life paintings although I think his technique is pretty cool.
This one is called Uole I like the bright color, but it feels too exposed. In Canaletto his bright colors are obscured by great washes of black and white. The color gets to creep out every once in a while. Like a secret. Ok, or it's like when you have really cute underwear on, and no one knows it but you, but you still walk a little taller all day.

It turned out to be a fun night and we all felt super classy and artsy and cultured while walking home.

Then this morning we decided to go see the crystal exhibition at La Specola because crystals rock. I could not stop thinking about liz p. I just knew the whole time she would be loving it, so I fed off that energy and absolutely loved it. Liz, dude. CRYSTALS. There were a bunch of little kids in the exhibit, and one little girl in particular took a fondness for Winnie and kept speaking to her in Italian. She was pointing out all of the rocks she liked and would say things like "I like this rock because it is pink and it glitters". She was really cute.

I'll leave you guys with some pictures of crystals. Just because they are so cool and everyone should look at crystals.