What to do when you have three days left in Buenos Aires

Elena and I are sitting on her bed watching castellano TV after eating ñoquis with Nico, Dan, and BT at an Italian restaurant in Palermo, as is traditional on the 29th of every month. (Some more porteño trivia…ñoquis, or gnocchi, is a very common dish due to all of BA’s Italian blood…lazy people are called ñoquis because they supposedly only come to work on the 29th when they know there will be free pasta.) Today I finally bought a big leather bag and am finishing up gift shopping for my amores in the US.

Yesterday after work I went to the Colleción Fortabat, the museum of Maria Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, the richest woman in Buenos Aires (cement, railroads). Known as “Amalita” to the public and the Malba staff when they are feeling ironic, she has an extensive collection of Latin American, North American, and Western European works, including several portraits of her.

Peter Bruegel! 10th grade art history.

Turner, taught to me as "golden visions of tinted steam" by the wonderful Marsha Russell.

OK, Ms. Russell taught me all of these artists. Ms. Russell taught me everything I know.

The most famous of these is by Andy Warhol and is one of the few he painted of a subject wearing any jewelry. Fitting, as Amalita was also known for her expensive bauble penchant. The Malba girls love this...they get all of Eduardo Costantini’s Sotheby’s and Christie’s catalogs when he is done browsing and when one of diamond necklaces appeared last week among the modern art, they joked that it looked like it came from Amalita’s stack instead.

The museum was phenomenal. It overlooks the northernmost dike of Puerto Madero and the wall facing the water is all glass on the second and third floor. These are called the primero y segundo piso here because the first floor is actually the “base,” numbered 0 in the elevator. So, you are walking along the primer piso, looking at an electric blue painting of Iguazú Falls where you JUST WERE and then you turn around and see the docks at night. It was f i n e.


Then we headed to the centro for dinner with Daniel Korn, head of the Yale Club of Argentina, another alum from the US Embassy, Tina, Ani, Alex, and a translator they knew. It was very interesting to hear the history of the Bulldogs program in Buenos Aires…a recent law banning unpaid labor made a bunch of the companies go through legal loopholes to host us this year, but at least we didn’t have a London-like situation in which only interns with British citizenship could participate. Leslie showed us all the Bulldogs video (we were all very frightened about this, including Leslie, but it turned out great). I got to talk about how much I love my job. It’s love. Then we went to La Cigale to send off Chris and meet his sister. He left today, so now we are two down due to one other person whom I’m missing right now:


I’m working on some more complete thoughts about my experience at Malba which I will probably post when I get back to Austin, along with photos and stories from the in between times. Tomorrow night we are going with Barbara to a milonga where young people dance tango. Friday I am going to my boss’s apartment for my farewell dinner, for which I am supposed to prepare “traditional Texan food.” To which a co-worker responded, Oh, Tequila! I decided on guacamole and pico de gallo instead, as they eat enough steak here already. And I don’t have a barbeque pit.

When I was on the bus on Las Heras yesterday I passed a city public works poster that showed the proposed plan for the Museum of the Argentine Novel and Author. Why this is the most typical porteño thing ever:

1. The city always toots its horn about public works around election time, and especially in wealthy areas.
2. Buenos Aires has a museum for every tiny thing, like the history of the city’s external debt.
3. It’s not enough to have a museum and a cultural center dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges, a museum dedicated to Xul Solar, and an estancia with museum dedicated to the famous gaucho poet Ricardo Güiraldes (I have been to all of these).
4. Argentina is a singular place. The novels here are not like other novels. The authors here are not like other authors.

Today

This is for Nico, who politely pointed out on Monday that it had been a month since I last updated my blog...many apologies! Que vuele el tiempo. Instead of trying to do a complete fill-in, the increasing inertia of which was preventing me from writing anything, I am going to share what happened today before work.

We

went

to

the

zoo.

Yes, many animals run around outside of cages.

Yes, the home of each animal is built in an architectural style corresponding to its native land. (Red Panda, Himalayas. The pagoda is a cultural generalization, but not by too much, and educational about geography and architecture.)

I walked to Malba from there through the Carlos Thayes Botanical Gardens, named for the French landscape architect responsible for many of Buenos Aires's most beautiful public spaces, which, I think, are some of the most beautiful things about Buenos Aires and certainly some of the strongest influences on its character as a city.

This space is free and public, but gated, and has an atmosphere less like the Parisian plazas such along Avenida 9 de Julio the Plaza de Mayo and more like Central Park of New York City.

Tai chi in the park

Living here has made me very curious about city planning and urban studies...and the Blue Book has just come out and I am now drooling over some urban studies courses. It's not its own major but can be interdisciplinary within Poli Sci, meaning I could take classes in other departments. Like architecture!

Everyone who doesn't know what the Blue Book is, go to this website if you have time to burn: http://students.yale.edu/oci/search.jsp. Feel free to share any life guidance.

Escuelismo

Thursday night was the opening of the Escuelismo exhibit at Malba. The third floor had been closed since I arrived for its installation (second floor is hits of the permanent collection and two temporary exhibitions and first floor is recent acquisitions), but Cintia had taken me up on Tuesday to show me the installation crew and introduce me to one of the artists who was there gluing part of her piece together. The pieces in Escuelismo were mostly pieces in the permanent collection acquired in the big 2004 buy but not yet shown, some loans, and some post-2004 acquisitions.

Malba at night

I and Nico came early, at 5:30, and got to hang out in the café-turned press room per Cintia’s invitation. I was given a press folder despite my protests that I was not, in fact, a member of the press. Cintia thought this was funny and told me to keep it. It had a very specific summary of the exhibit concept, pieces, and artists, which is always helpful.

Nico and me. Note press folder.

We then moved up to the exhibition room and heard an introduction by one of the women from the publicity department and then—Cintia had to explain this to me—contemporary art inside jokes. This involved one of the artists flitting about the room, gesturing at different pieces, and singing in English, Spanish, and French, of which I understood zero percent. There was definitely some Celine Dion in there:

Cintia getting interviewed about the exhibit for a TV show! I told her she would be famous and she said the interview would air at 2 in the morning. A lot of porteños are awake then, anyway.

The title of the exhibit was Escuelismo: Argentine art of the 90s. The term refers not to an art movement but to a critical approach to contemporary Argentine art. Basically, by now much of this art is very conceptual, so you have to think of weird ways of mentally organizing it for it to make sense. “Escuelismo” was the name of an essay published in 1978 by influential Argentine writer and art critic Ricardo Martín-Crosa, so influential that artists actually started to produce work that followed trends he identified.

The three themes that he named in the essay were imagery of primary school (toys, cartoons, colored blocks, school supplies), traditionally “childlike” acts of creation (cutting, pasting, collage, crafts), and classroom relationships (teacher/student, individual/group). You can almost look at any art piece and qualify it as some interpretation of one of those themes, and that’s what the exhibition chose to do. The themes were assigned red, green, and blue colors and each given their own section within the exhibition space. I think the exhibition did a good job of making the art more accessible:

Cintia was kind enough to invite all of the Yale interns, who enjoyed the event and seeing the inside of Malba for the first time.


I was worried about Escuelismo being difficult to access—it definitely took me a while to understand the idea—and a few of them voiced that, but Paloma and Elena said that they were glad it made them think.

Chris looking at tiny people in one piece.

Nikos was especially fascinated and disgusted by a video piece that showed sketched cartoon creatures torturing each other, which was a commentary on how seeing violence in cartoons and video games conditions us to more easily accept it. When I took everyone around to see the rest of the museum, Paloma and Elena especially liked the Antonio Berni painting of the faces from my first post, and Nico liked this pink abstract acrylic number that I do not much care for. Everyone enjoyed the Pablo Reinoso bench that has wood slats extending to wrap around 2 stories of the museum.

From 7:30 onward the event was open to the public, when means anyone in the neighborhood could walk in, grab some champagne at reception, and head upstairs.

Other highlights of the evening were chatting with Socorro (news to me that this is a name. I was taught it as the expression you use when you cry for help in a disaster situation), a co-worker who started the same week that I did, about her childhood in Mendoza in the provinces, and then meeting Maria Costantini of the Costantini Foundation. A.k.a. un gran honor. She was very nice and shared some refreshing skepticism about the accessibility of some of the Escuelismo work. She prefers the museum’s early twentieth-century work, she said—big surprise as they were her family’s personal art collection. Overall, the evening was great and I am so grateful that Cintia included us all.

me, Chris, Tsega, Nico, Casey Blue, Marisa, Leslie, Elena, Nikos and Paloma out front afterward

Feliz Día del Padre!

Happy Father’s Day, Dad and Granddad! My dad and Granddad are gems. These photos of them are from my Black and White class last semester.

Dad in front of his orchard, Spring Break

enjoying a sandwich that sweet Donna made. Note the trusty Dublin Dr. Pepper.

showing off some star bricks from his collection

leading Mason and Cameron in some Dutch oven cooking

enjoying his Sunday New York Times while waiting for steaks to finish grilling in the backyard

Granddad behind the Becton Center when he, Grandmother and Claire came to visit Yale in April!

Love you both lots and Happy Father's Day to all.

Winter and company

I stayed home from work today and am now feeling much better (this also after Power Jump), but will share some thoughts from yesterday afternoon when I returned home:

It’s very strange having winter in June. I made a comment the other day about how it’s just the beginning of winter and it felt like fall temperature (in New Haven. Austin fall is 85 degrees), and someone responded that June 21st, which is just around the corner, is actually the winter solstice here. I couldn’t believe it. Now that I think about it, the coldest months for us are after the winter solstice in December so I guess we haven’t reached the peak of the cold yet. It usually gets up to 62 degrees during the daytime and down to 45 at night.

Parque Tres de Febrero, Monday

A few observations about this: it actually makes me sad to have winter coming without Christmas. Now I realize how everyone in Narnia must have felt. This also means that the holidays that do occur around this time are huge deals and explains the apparent fanaticism—beyond just retail—about Dia Del Padre coming up, also on June 21st. Thinking of you, Dad. Argentine independence day is July 9th, and the tradition is for vendors in the Centro to sell hot chocolate and churros while everyone comes out and celebrates and the president is forced to attend a mass in which the Father lambasts her administration in the sermon. I am very excited about this and plan to attend.

I also realized that I’m spoiled by New England fall because I’m sad that the leaves here are falling without turning orange and red.

Elena and Nico in the park

Everyone is feeling a little engripeado. I’m referring to the people on our trip and the city in general, who is rushing the emergency rooms in fear of Gripe A because they have free healthcare (of which they are very proud, but also which Elena explains is very misleading because many people don't realize that they don't qualify for goverment health coverage).

I went to the pharmacy for the first time today to get Vitamin C and in hopes of Vick’s Vapo-Rub. They actually have Vick’s (or “Vick,” as the pharmacist called it) here in Buenos Aires, but the pharmacy was sold out, and they were selling Vitamin C supplements for $25 USD. I thought this was a little much so I went to the pharmacy next door and bought Vitamin C for 25 pesos. Sometimes Buenos Aires is strangely predictable. I realized after I had popped the first pill that they were not chewable as I had assumed, but rather “efervescente” or intended for combination with water a la Alka-Seltzer. I chugged water as Vitamin C and baking soda exploded in my mouth. I am now burping a lot and listening to the “December” George Winston album that we always play in the house at Christmastime to get me a little more in the winter mood.

Martes - Jueves

So Martes morning I tried mate (two syllables) for the first time. Mate is the Argentine national drink and is made by steeping leaves from the yerba mate plant in hot water and sipping through a little silver straw from a hollowed out gourd:

I had heard that it was an acquired taste, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Florencia, the adult education director, gave me some of hers, and it was basically like very strong, bitter green tea. I asked if it had caffeine and they said it had “mateina” which is apparently stronger. BUT, lots of antioxidants, and then Florencia and someone else told a joke about a doctor and a gaucho singing the benefits of mate together. Sweet.

Also at the office on Tuesday, Cintia excused herself from her desk and told me she had to go to a meeting with a coworker. She and Alejandro, one of the head exhibition mounters, then went into this corner, whipped out the day’s Clarin and started jabbing at it and shouting stories to each other. The day before, their football team, Chacarita, had won 1-0 and earned itself a spot in division 1 for the first time in 5 years. Alejandro explained that Chacarita isn’t a huge team like Boca or River, but now it will play against them. And that there are plenty of crazy Chacarita fans who were waiting for this, like the 2,000 who filled plaza San Martin near the stadium celebrating.

Tuesday night for we went to Andres von Buch’s apartment, which was beautiful and overlooked the city. I recognized a lot of contemporary art. He and his family were extremely nice, as well as several 18 to 23-year-old friends of their daughter whom we got to know a little and will hopefully be seeing more of. They were an interesting group. The first girl I talked to was an art history major at the University of Buenos Aires, UBA, and painted, one girl wanted to perform on Broadway, and another boy was German and spoke English with a Scottish accent because he’d gone to a Scottish school in Buenos Aires.

Paloma and I talked with two more girls about how they went to Vail to work at ski resorts during one vacation with the idea of bringing money back because the dollar is so much stronger than the Argentine peso (today 1 USD = 3.78 ARS), a sort of societized version of the immigration we studied in ER&M, and also about their opinion of the upcoming elections. The girls think they are a joke. One of them said that going into politics in the university is looked down upon as dirty, and she described Peronism as a movement with a name only and without any fixed values. We were surprised at how down to earth they were considering they looked like they had walked out of Argentine Gossip Girl.

I'm also wondering how impossible the political change that the girls praised the US for actually is in Argentina. I read an editorial in the Buenos Aires Herald, the English language newspaper, about how literally every party leader (because for the upcoming elections you don’t vote for individuals, but for parties who then get to pack the legislature. Neat, right?) was a puppet, which was particularly disheartening.

We also got the sense from a conversation that evening between Andres and Chris’s boss that they ran half of Latin America. We are definitely still in the Yale bubble in Buenos Aires….Paloma and I are looking for volunteer organizations. There’s a neat microfinance group in the city and if that doesn’t work out, we’re going to try for an elementary school in the barrio next to ours, Once. Once (like the number) is a working-class neighborhood that is known for its Bolivian and Peruvian immigrants, wholesale textiles, and the center of Buenos Aires’s large Jewish community.

Tuesday was also Chris’s birthday!

Two noteworthy things happened on Wednesday. The first was that Fernando, another of the exhibition mounters, brought Cintia some watercolors that he had just finished in the workshop. They were very delicately beautiful. He had done them from hunters’ photographs of just-shot rabbits and a lion, and everyone crowded around and talked about how they made you think about the relationship between sleep and death, and Maraní, the head exposition coordinator, talked about a stain of paint becoming an animal. It was just a lovely moment.

The second thing on Wednesday: POWER JUMP. Elena and Paloma had gone on Monday and loved it, and I went with Paloma on Wednesday night and had a semi-religious experience. Imagine a class of thirty people on personal mini-trampolines doing aerobics in time to blasting Spanish and English pop hits and a shouting instructor. During difficult moves the whole group whoops and hollers, and the front wall of the exercise room is a giant mirror which just quadruples the fun. It is a great workout. I return tonight.

Yesterday morning before work I looked around in the bookstores on Corrientes street which Barbara, Chris’s boss’s daughter, had recommended to me. One of them, Galeria Gandhi, had a great music selection as well and sort of reminded me of Waterloo. I liked the English-language music the staff had recommended so I talked with the guy at the counter and he recommended this CD of Juan Ravioli’s, to which I am now enjoying. Ravioli (only funny to me, apparently) is from Buenos Aires and Paris 1980 is his band—the CD was released in 2006. Gandhi boy made a Ravioli/Nick Drake lyrics comparison that I most certainly did not understand, but I did had a whole conversation with him in castellano without him switching to English!

Lunes

Today at Malba I translated and edited the labels for the Escuelismo exhibit. It was nice to have a project that I will see the results of on June 17th! I also got a brochure from last month’s Manuel Álvarez Bravo exhibit which I’m sad to have missed. Álvarez Bravo is the most influential Latin American photographer of the twentieth century who was known for archetypal portraits of Mexican beauty. One of the photographs in the exhibit I had chosen to do a writeup of during photo class this semester (ART 136…take it) because I liked it so much:

Qué chiquito es el mundo

Dos pares de piernas

Trabajadores del mundo

This one was not in the exhibit, but…..Manuel Álvarez Bravo + Frida Kahlo.

I walked back to my bus stop at sunset today. The homes on the way (Palermo Viejo) are beautiful.

Avenida del Libertador where I catch the 102

Tonight the men cooked again and it was wonderful. They are now playing chess. We are all camped out in 602 (our room is 303) because there is wireless here.

I must share this picture of Nikos, me, Elena, and Nico trying to look somber in the Recoleta cemetery.

Tomorrow we eat dinner at the apartamento of Andres Von Buch, a Pierson alum who is supposed to be a ricosuave.

Also: http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/harrypotterandthehalfbloodprince/