Starling Travel

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is hosting an exhibit of Edvard Munch’s artwork from February 19 to May 8, 2006.

• MoMA.org | Exhibitions | 2006 | Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul

Best known for his work, “The Scream”, Edvard Munch was accused of creating “degenerate art” by the Nazi party. He has later become known as an Existential Superstar. I think I drew a copy of this painting more than a hundred times during my teenaged angst years. The image just resonated with me and based on its popularity, it resonates with all humans at some point in their lives.

The universal feeling of grief was something that Edvard was aptly able to portray. Take this painting, “Death in a Sickroom”, which portrays the death of his sister. I have always been haunted by this painting because of the man leaning on the wall on the left side. The whole family is grieving and he is using the wall to support himself. He has to hold it in for the family, but the sadness is overtaking his body. It’s that figure, shoddily painted in the background that brings the utter despair to the room.

If you happen to be traveling to New York, you can see the 87 paintings on display at the Museum of Modern Art. If you are stuck at home, you can see their online exhibit here:

• MoMA.org | Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul | Click On The Audio Tour Full Program

Via: Happy News – Edvard Munch retrospective opens at MoMA – by Deepti Hajela with Associated Press

I thought six and a half minutes would be too long for my short attention span, but this travel video is expertly cut and beautifully filmed. The movie follows a couple that are so in love that it spills out of my computer screen and all over my desk in front of me. I am smiling and imagining myself in Bangkok and on the island of Koh Samui with someone I love.

She offers me a dead grasshopper and I want to reach into the computer screen and take it from her hand. Thank you for this glimpse into your trip! It was beautiful!

The folks at Houseplant Picture Studios found a few books of family photos at a swap meet in Huntington Beach, California. They feature pictures from a family that probably owned a liquor store.

• Houseplant Picture Studio presents…PHOTOS OF AN UNKNOWN FAMILY WHO PROBABLY OWNED A LIQUOR STORE

The people at Houseplant described their find:

“We purchased two hefty photo albums filled-to-the-brim with family photos of a hitherto unknown family. We haven’t yet taken the time to look at the back of every photo to try to figure out the family’s name. We have noticed that a lot of the photos feature family members standing in or in front of a nice-looking, fully-stocked liquor store. It’s quite obvious that the family pictured in the photo albums owned the liquor store.”

The best thing that I like about the Liquor Store Family are the photos that they took traveling.

I love looking through these photos, imagining stories about these people. They traveled with their children. They traveled with another couple. I imagine that the men are brothers and they took many trips together. His lovely, red-headed wife always had her little handbag with her and her hair is always perfectly coifed. It seems like he loved her very much because he took so many pictures of her. She’s always there smiling.

Next time you’re taking photographs on your vacation, look at them through the eyes of a stranger and imagine someone years from now seeing you in front of the Eiffel Tower posing for an eternity.