Die Pinakothek der Moderne - Day 14

I'm still on my quest to catch up with my posts, so here's the next installment: what I did last Sunday, April 11 (Day 14).

In the morning I went back to St. Luke's Lutheran church, where I went on Easter Sunday.  It was another lovely service, and three little babies were baptized...one of the families even wore full traditional outfits: Lederhosen and Dirdls, including Lederhosen for the little baby boy.  I didn't take any pictures of the baptisms or of the church, because it would be a little awkward to sit in service and then randomly break out my camera to take pictures afterward, but hopefully at some point I'll have time to go and take some pictures.

After church, I went with a few friends (Erica, Amanda, Jeff, Corbin, DK, Landon, and one of Landon's friends who was visiting for the weekend) to the Pinakothek der Moderne, which is one of a series of three huge art museums here in Munich...I visited the Neue Pinakothek last week and posted pictures from there as well.  The third is the Alte Pinakothek, and since alte means old, the name is pretty self explanatory - the Alte Pinakothek contains the oldest paintings, while the Neue (new) Pinakothek and the Pinakothek der Moderne (modern) contain more recent paintings.  I visited all three when I was in Munich two summers ago, and while I haven't been back to the Alte Pinakothek yet this trip, I think the Neue Pinakothek and the Pinakothek der Moderne are my favorites.  We found out that most museums in Munich are either free or cost only one Euro on Sundays, so the museum was a little more crowded than during the week, but I'll gladly put up with a few more people if it means saving a few Euros.  Here are some of my favorite pieces:

Maedchen unter Baeumen (1914 - Girls under Trees) - August Macke

Hohe Sonnenblumen (1926 - High Sunflowers) - Emil Nolde

(Kristin, this one made me think of you) 

Landschaft bei Mougins II (1965 - Landscape of Mougins II) - Pablo Picasso

Schmidthof Zuerich (1932)

There were a couple rooms full of photography instead of paintings...this was with one of the collections.

Die natuerlichen Gnaden (1967 - The Natural Grace) - Rene Magritte

Personnage et Soleils (1958) - Karel Appel

This one was really interesting because you could see just how thick the paint was on the canvas...some parts of it must have been at least an inch thick.  I know some of the other painting must have been the same way, but it was really obvious with this one...I tried to take this third picture so that you could see some of it.

Das Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts (1983 - The End of the 20th Century) - Joseph Beuys

Acht Schleifenbilder (1986) - Sigmar Polke

I'm not sure what Scheifenbilder means, but acht is eight, and there were appropriately a total of eight of these paintings throughout the room.

In addition to the paintings, the Pinakothek der Moderne has an architecture section and a design section.  The design section contains some cool modern and historical furniture and other household design items, but I didn't really take any pictures of that.  The architecture section was really interesting:

One room was full of models of various buildings, and it included a life-sized display of a section of one of the designs, made out of wood:

I think that design is part of this structure, which is a model of the winning design for the Plaza de la Encarnacion, wherever that may be:

We had fun looking at all the intricate patterns, and also at the life-sized version that was over our heads...you can see two of the big wooden pillars in the picture above.

I see you!

As always in Munich, the building itself was also interesting:

The entrance hall and a small look at some of the design displays:

The skylight that was directly overhead above the large open entryway:

We stayed at the Pinakothek for a few hours, and then went back to Jeff's room to make dinner.  It ended up being me, Kathryn, Jeff, Corbin, Alexandre, Landon, and Landon's friend Dan, and Kathryn and I lucked out - the boys did all the cooking and cleaning.  I told Mom and Kristin this and they were impressed, and here's the proof:

Kathryn relaxing while we waited for our food...yummy Spaetzle with veggies.

After dinner, we all hung out and talked for a while.  We spoke way too much English over the weekend, partially because we were all a little brain-dead after the placement test we had on Friday, and partially because Landon's friend Dan didn't speak any German.  Either way, it was a good way to end the weekend.

Still coming: my trip to the Tegernsee in the Alps on Monday, the scavenger hunt around Munich that we did on Tuesday, and my trip to Regensburg today!