HEARD MUSEUM

On Wednesday, March 7, Geri and I took in the Heard Museum in Phoenix, a premier museum dedicated to Native American art and culture.  The museum building is atypical in that it appears to resemble more a Latin American country estate than a museum.  In a word, it is gorgeous.

The museum includes an enormous wealth of Native American art, some ancient and some contemporary.  As often happens, I did not do a very good job of capturing the art objects.  In part, this is because of my difficulty in being creative in this process.  But in part, also, the task was made more difficult by the fact that the exhibits tended to be quite crowded.  Here is some of what I mean.

I particularly liked the use of curved wood paneling used to separate the exhibit areas.

Yes, a careful look reveals that there is a patron reclining on the bench in the background of this last photo.

The facility included two or three sculpture courtyards.

Again, I was a little disappointed in my lack of ability to capture the individual sculptures.  Here are a few of my better attempts.

Perhaps the above sculpture is just a bit too simple.  I did like that I incorporated the cactus in the background.

I thought the shot below worked better as a B&W.  There was enough light reflecting off the face of the brave to distinguish it from the statue of the woman behind.

For me it was the exterior of the museum that was the real star.  Here are a few shots that showed off the exterior.

I particularly liked the wrought iron gates used to separate different exterior spaces, as in the following shot.

I thought this shot worked well as a B&W also.

Finally, here is a photo of a larger expanse of the exterior that I especially liked, probably because of the quality of light from the later afternoon sun.

The ornamental tree in the background helped also.