With all due respect to the musical The Sound of Music, one of whose songs contained lyrics bastardized in the title of this post, we must bid adieu to the Summer of Steins in San Francisco. Both exhibitions SEEING GERTRUDE STEIN: FIVE STORIES at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and THE STEINS COLLECT: MATTISE, PICASSO AND THE PARISIAN AVANT-GARDE at SFMOMA end tomorrow, September 6th. And though both of them will be travelling, the first to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC from October 14th – January 22nd, 2012 and the other one to both Paris at the Grand Palais from October 3rd – January 16, 2012 and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York from February 21 through June 3, 2012, the Summer of Steins in San Francisco will not be able to be replicated as the Fall, Winter or Spring of Steins in any of the other cities – this summer was just too special!
the movie Von Trapps bid their adieus!
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In my children’s book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom, which I hope will soon reach the bookstores of the various museums where the Stein exhibitions are being held, the two young boys who visit rue de Fleurus encounter the atelier’s floor-to-ceiling paintings for the first time:
“Look at this really rambling room!” whispered Tom. “There are masterful modern paintings floor to ceiling! It looks like a museum! I hate museums, everything in a museum is musty and moldy.”
Fritz pressed his nose against one of the paintings. “This person has four flaming eyes and three thick ears and is not musty and moldy!”
Tom Hachtman's Fritz and Tom
I can assure you that there is also nothing musty or moldy at The Steins Collect exhibition which opened last week at SFMOMA !
In the 25+ years that I’ve been obsessed with GertrudeandAlice I have had moments more extraordinary than the proverbial “aha!” moments. I would have to say that they are more like “ah Stein!” moments!
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