TX Day 3- Lavish Sculptures, Latin Art, and LBJ
Today started with me waking up to this kind of awesome but kind of unnerving King of the Hill fan art above the air mattress at my Air BnB. King of the Hill is one of my all time favorite shows though, so this was basically everything I had hoped Texas might be.
After leaving the Air BnB, I started the day by going to Spokeman, an artsy cafe/bar/concert venue with big murals by local artists all over the walls and mounted bicycle sculptures providing the titular spokes. I think it's very in keeping with the city's aesthetic that there's a lot more cafe/bar hybrids in Austin than other cities I've seen. I really enjoyed my coffee, and i couldn't resist also getting a cranberry pecan scone because it looked so alluring. It tasted even better than it looked.
After fueling up my next stop was a place that shared a name with my mom's nickname for my car: The Cathedral of Junk. Local artist, Vince Hannemann, started working on a small project in his backyard constructing a little hut out of discarded items. This little hut gained popularity and soon people were donating there own junk to Vince, gradually turning the cathedral into a multi-room multi-story building comprised of over 60 tons of junk. As cool an artistic and architectural accomplishment as this is, for some strange reason the neighbors weren't thrilled by the tower of refuse looming over their yards, so they called in city officials. Texas has possibly the most lax zoning laws in the country so Vince's cathedral was completely legal, but city officials did have to make sure it was safe and structurally sound. Despite being made almost entirely out of garbage, the cathedral has passed every inspection with no architectural weak points. The cathedral is open to the public, but unfortunately since it is in Vince's backyard of the house he still lives in he does ask that you call ahead which I did not do in time. It's such a massive creation though that I still got a pretty great view even if I didn't get the full pilgrimage inside.
After paying my respects to the cathedral, I decided to see some slightly more traditional sculptures at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. This museum collects several monumental works by celebrated sculptor, Charles Umlauf, and situates them along the beautiful gardens on the grounds of his former house and studio. Umlauf was a world-renowned sculptor in his own right, as well as the Life Drawing and Sculpture Professor at the University of Texas Austin for 40 years. I'm pretty sure I have seen some of his sculptures at museums throughout this trip, but I'll admit I wasn't super familiar with his work before checking about the museum. After just pulling into the parking lot and seeing the gigantic sculptures of Eve, a family, and the three muses I knew I was never going to forget him.
The gardens are complimented by a small museum highlighting other works by Umlauf as well as honoring the works of a rotating cast of contemporary and classic sculptors. The museum was currently in the process of changing over the guest sculptor so it wasn't open but the combination of the gardens and Umlauf's own work was plenty impressive on its own. The sculptures ranged from almost entirely abstract forms to highly realistic human and animal forms. The majority of Umlauf's works though strike a sort of impressionistic middle ground between both ends of this creative spectrum, with fully realized characters but with heightened and stylized features capturing feelings and tones rather than pure representations. Coupled with beautiful landscape, the place was truly an amazing sight to behold. Subjects ranged from the classical such as religious and mythological characters to the personal such as Umlauf's own children and wife. There was even a strutting rhinoceros and an unfortunately named shrine to Christ called Come Unto Me.
My personal sculptures included: two dynamically lifelike sculptures of Umlauf's own children at play, ice skating and diving respectively; a sensuous sculpture of two muscular lovers in passionate embrace; a fantastically delicate ballerina stretching; a heartbreaking impressionist refugee mother and child; a gravity defying almost taunting woman in repose; a stunning Christ in a crucifixion pose but with angel's wings where the cross would be; and a beautiful abstract tube like woman, whose simple form belies a deceptively complex pose. I just don't know how people are able to look at lumps of clay or blocks of marvel and know that these shapes are hidden within.
Of the non-sculptural wonders of the garden, this waterfall snaking through the woods was hard to top.
After the museum, I saw some more amazing outdoor art by driving by the Hope Outdoor Gallery, an impressive collection of spray painted murals across some long gravel walls. I could not find any parking and the road was very thin and the drivers very crazy, so I only enjoyed this gallery from a distance. I truly regret not getting out and really enjoying this because in the time since I was in Austin the city has voted to tear down the gallery to make room for future construction so I might never get another chance.
The art took a turn indoors with a trip to the Blanton Museum of Art located on the campus of UT Austin, thus killing two birds with one stone as I got to look at some cool art and also wander around the university campus. Things start off with a bang right when you walk into the museum with the installation Stacked Water by Teresita Fernández created specifically for the museum's atrium. The piece features large bands of color across the stairs and walls with a big abstract jellyfish like chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It's all meant to evoke in an abstract way ideas about the power and mystery of the ocean, which is very cool though I mainly liked it because it looked like a funky alien.
The main special exhibit was about the works of leading abstract expressionist, Ellsworth Kelly, tracing his career broadly but also specifically in regards to the genesis for a large scale piece made special for the museum called Austin. Much like it's namesake, Austin the piece is actually outside the museum in the form of a small chapel, so we'll get there a little bit later.
I had seen some of Kelly's abstract pieces in contemporary galleries all over the country, and I'll be honest they weren't always my cup of tea (because my cups of tea tends to look like something). I gained a lot more of respect and understanding for his work though, through this exhibit after reading more about his process and seeing his trajectory as an artist. It's probably bad that I always like seeing really good representational pieces by abstract artists because that's usually what convinces me they're actually talented and the abstraction is for a purpose not out of a lack of other abilities. This is super reductive and unfair, because in theory I think abstract art should be able to stand on its own, but getting that little leg up of more context and information really doe help, at least for me. The exhibit started with some of Kelly's earliest works, surprisingly haunting portraits and richly detailed drawings of religious buildings across Europe which really impressed me.
Kelly became dissatisfied with this form of painting however, and strove to break things down to their most elemental forms. He became very interested in new ideas of color theory and geometric art and created a series of works using just varying shades of black and white. While these works may appear simple, Kelly made intensive sketches before beginning each work frequently trying to get his angles and curves just right. A lot of times things that look symmetrical are actually just ever so slightly off center creating either a little more black or a little more white, messing with your perception and hopefully causing the kind of pure emotional reaction Kelly hoped for. He also was one of the earliest artists of his time to eschew traditonal framing, sometimes even making the shape of the canvas totally irregular. I don't know how much I like all of these, but in the large scale works and the irregular pieces there was something about their monumental size and precise angling that I did find very absorbing and oddly powerful.
The next wings of this exhibit focused on two different periods of Kelly's career that I personally found to be a lot more impressive. The first series showcased his fascination with color theory and the idea of making the artistic process as central as the finished product. The series was called Arranged by Chance, and they were made by making a grid on the canvas, assigning a number to different colors and drawing numbers randomly to assign different colors to different sections in the grid. The potential colors and grid dimensions varied by painting, but the finished products are all fascinating blurs of slightly organized chaos and it is cool that the longer you stare at them the more your brain tries futilely to make sense of the senseless patterns. The other series was a total 180, focusing on Kelly's sculptural work featuring towering elegant wooden structures with subtle but precise curvatures and simple color schemes. Something about the way they carved up the space drawing your eyes upward with their gentle curves was really astonishing despite their relative simpleness. All these different phases of Kelly's long career end up coming back for the outdoor chapel in different ways, but I don't wanna spoil that too early.
After the large special exhibit, I moved on to a smaller room showcasing the works of another featured guest artist named Clarissa Tossin. Her piece is entitled Meeting of Waters, and draws inspiration from the town of Manaus in her native Brazil. Manaus has the prime location of being a meeting point between the Amazon River, the Rio Negro, and the Atlantic Ocean, and as such has played a central role in shipping and commerce. This was not always a good thing though as the prosperity came from it's initial rise as the center of Brazil's booming rubber production soon fell to crippling poverty when the rubber companies began failing around the the early part of the 20th century. To stimulate the floundering economy, the city got designated a free trade zone and became home to the production and shipping departments of large multinational companies such as Coca Cola, Apple, Harley Davison, and Sony. Tossin became fascinated with the juxtaposition of this swarming mass production with local traditional arts, and her pieces feature traditional terracotta pottery and weaving techniques used to create disposable consumer products, such as coke bottles, laptop keyboards, and CDs all caught and tangled up in fishing nets. Even what may look at first glance like cut up cardboard Amazon boxes is actually a meticulously woven basket. At the center of the room is a massive long trailing replica of a bird's eye view of the rivers that meet at Manaus made out of woven inkjet printer papers. I was thoroughly impressed with this project, and I loved the way she completely repurposed common place items and imagery in a way that really challenges viewers to think more about how our constant consumerism can alter landscapes both physical and cultural.
From there it was into the museum's permanent collection. This started with a cool survey of modern and contemporary American Art. The first gallery here was a collection of pieces from the infamous Armory Show of 1913 that introduced the America to the modern art world. The talk of the show was the international artists, like Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse, whose nontraditional and abstract figures were considered revolutionary for the time. While the Europeans really stole the show, the American modernists certainly held their own. The Blanton acquired a really stellar sampling of their contributions featuring some big names like Stuart Davis and Thomas Hart Benton. This was my jam with most of the paintings featuring a heightened almost magical-realist approach to traditional landscapes and figures.
My favorites from this collection were from artists I was less familiar with but they all shared a thread of really dramatic character work. These included: a painting by Philip Evergood of distorted fatigued couples participating in a Dance Marathon, a common practice around the turn of the century that gained great popularity during the Depression because of the potential for cash prizes, though the whimsical nature of people dancing competitively tended to curdle as these poor young people became more starved and sleep deprived in the hopes of eking out some extra money; a painting by Jerry Bywater called Oil Field Girls, which features some beautiful hopeful Texas girls silhouetted against an ominous background of desserts and noxious smoke; and a painting of two boxers by Fletcher Martin that forgoes a literal background with a more thematic and isolating monochrome scene wonderfully capturing the headspace of the boxer who's know he's not getting back up.
Up next was a gallery of Western art, featuring a mix of the classics and some contemporary pieces. My favorites here were a lush impressionistic portrait of a cattle drive by Maynard Dixon; an enormous and truly striking fiberglass sculpture of a Mexican man carrying his wife and child on his shoulders by Luis Jiminez that captured a powerful sense of strength and determination (and unfortunate cultural relevance) with a bright colorful pop art sensibilit; and the Largests painting Frederic Remington ever maid, entitled the Charge.
The next room featured some modern and contemporary works by Native American artist that blended traditional crafts with more modern styles and abstractions. I was particularly draw to the swirling vibrant colors in Ramona Sakiestewa's work with dyed wool tapestries, because I've really never seen work like that in either Contemporary or Native American art exhibits I've been to so far. I also liked seeing, now that the museum in Oklahoma pointed it out to me, that this was an example of a museum that did group Native artists in with American Art which is a small but I think important curatorial gesture of not distancing those artistic voices.
The other big highlight of this gallery for me was a series of drawings that children made and mailed home from the Indian Boarding Schools, which were a historical black mark of cruelty and attempts to exterminate an entire culture perpetrated by our government and a lot of supposedly Christian organizations. As horrid as the institutions were, I always like seeing that basically no matter where or when you look in history kids will always be kids and they're going to goof off and doodle silly things no matter what you throw at them. It's a really beautiful thing.
Up next came more contemporary art, which was organized around different themes. First came minimalism with highlights for me being a piece by a Jo Baer that tricked you by only having color right around the frame; a hyper zoomed in painting of a drill by Lee Lozano playfully entitled Ream; and a stripped down sunset by our old friend Ellsworth Kelly.
Up next came text based art which was really interesting compositionally. There was a piece where the stenciled phrase "I am somebody" blurred into an abstract mess, making you question the speaker's believe in their own mantra; a literal shining beacon of positivity in the form of a neon "We belong here"; and my personal favorite piece, a series by Jamal Cyrus of laser cut papyrus called Eroding Witness which traces out newspaper articles concerning the assassination of Black activist named Carl Hampton by Houston police with the idea being that the absence of text calls to mind the silencing of the story and of black voices in general. It was a fascinating use of modern non-traditional techniques to tell an unfortunately timeless story.
The next room showcased two artists making portraits of generally underrepresented groups, Black women and Latino men. Deborah Roberts used a mix of painting and collage in her portraits of young Black girls with the collage elements highlighting their lack of representation (and thus their lack of role models) in fashion magazines. Vincent Valdez's portraits while beautifully rendered captured the truly tragic subject of forgotten Latino men who were lynched down south, painted in a way that only actually suggested the noose somehow making it more frightening.
The next room was more lighthearted focusing on more textural abstractions. My favorites here included a ridiculous mess of color and cartoon imagery on a stretched canvas called Painter and Loid by Trenton Doyle Hancock that captured a clash between two made up abstract superheroes; an effervescent bubbly painting called Sprouting (the Transmigration of the Soul) by Yayoi Kusama; and a painting of a janitor taking the trash outside of the famous shell like exterior of the Broad Museum in LA by Ramiro Gomez.
Up next was an impressive full room allegory of an installation by Cildo Meireles entitled Missão/Missões (How to Build Cathedrals). The piece consists of 800 communion wafers stacked in a small column between a bed 600,000 coins and 2,000 hanging cattle bones, a symbol of the thing frail bridge organized religion walks between souls and money. The centerpieces is surrounded 80 paving stones that visitors can walk on, and the whole thing is enshrouded by a thing black cloth veil that sets a dreamy ominous tone as it alters the light and waves slightly in the air conditioning. It was weird and a little creepy, but as a recovering Catholic I found the imagery particularly captivating and emotionally charged. I think the Ireland and Latin America could go forever talking about the odd combination of destructive and supportive forces the Catholic church provided them and that lingering, messy, conflicting legacy.
That installation served as bridge from the American Contemporary wing into the contemporary section of the Latin American wing of the museum. I'm not super surprised given Texas' proximity to Mexico, but I have to say this was the most impressive, diverse, and meticulously curated collection of Latin American art I've ever seen in a museum's permanent collection. I really liked the weirdness and whimsy of the contemporary pieces which had a mix of poignant messages and a sort of mischievous humor. My favorite of these was a piece that would be so easy to overlook by Miguel Angel Rojas called Via Lactea (Milky Way in English). This four foot high slightly staggered line of little dots, seems very unimpressive upon first look, but it turns out that each of those dots is actually a teeny tiny photo of gay sex clandestinely taken through bathroom peepholes at different movie theaters around Colombia in the 70s. The piece was shown at contemporary art shows in Colombia at the time, even though the country had intense censorship of any obscene and especially gay materials because nobody ever thought to look close enough to figure out what the photos were of (even if you do know they're pretty blurry) so the piece kept slipping by censors undetected, which I thought was hilarious and amazing. That's my kind of insurrection. Other highlights for me were a piece by Jorge Eilson that featured a knotted canvas stretched over painted wood calling to mind traditional Incan Quipus and also an abstract poem also written by the artist that translates to "“Knots / That are not knots / And knots that are only / Knots."; a beautiful woven blanket with the tonally confusing image of a sacrificial lamb stabbed but smiling made on the same day the artist Feliciano Centurión received his AIDS diagnosis; and a series of photographs by Alfredo Jaar that capture the insanely treacherous work that goes into mining the gold that becomes a part of jewelry worn merely for decoration.
The next gallery focused on contemporary portraiture by Latin artists, including some that playfully aped European military portraits, some that beautifully captured the spirit of their subjects (the one in the middle is of Sterling Brown), and some that took a more 3 dimensional approach to their subjects.
Up next came a real highlight of this wing, and really the whole museum for me, a series of pieces by an Argentinian arts collective called the Nueva Figuración (New Figuration) that essentially brought ideas of abstract expressionism, surrealism, and dadaism (three of my favorite isms) roaring into the world of figurative drawing of 1960s Argentina causing quite a stir. Prominent artists on display included Rómulo Macció, Jorge de la Vega, Carlos Alonso, and Luis Felipe Noe. I loved these pieces so much because of their dreamlike logic, innovative compositions, and blending of realistic, cartoonish, and nightmarish figures all in one work. It makes me acutely aware of how American and European centric so much of my art exposure is, which really makes me wonder how much art (and everything really) I would love is out there in the world that I might never see unless I happen to stumble upon it, because I wouldn't have even known what to search for to get this stuff. My roommate for three of my four years of college and one of my best friends in the world is from Buenos Aires, so seeing all this funky Argentine art also brought back fond memories of my own funky Argentine. Really I suppose the reason I even do so much of this non-comedy stuff (and a fairly big reason for the comedy stuff too) is because for me art of all kinds is very strongly associated to memories I have of people and places that are important to me and it's my own little way of keeping them close even when they're not.
Next up came Latin American abstract paintings. I liked these because I found them very visually dense and absorbing so I could sort of zen out while I looked at them, but I think I really liked them more as a window into how the abstract expressionist movement I've seen plenty of got interpreted in new parts of the globe.
The next section was focused on Narrative paintings which ranged from really surreal with pieces like Casting the Runes by Leonora Carrington to the sweetly realistic such as this piece of a child being guided in his first steps by his mom by Jean Charlot to the dramatically mythological such as this painting of an Aztec emperor burning his feet by David Alfaro Siqueirios.
My favorite narrative works though were the beautiful wood cuts of hard working laborers by Everado Ramirez and Justino Fernandez. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but I am just a big old sucker for woodcuts. Something about the wealth of emotions and imagery that artists are able to create despite the limitations of space and dimensions from using a literal block of wood is just endlessly amazing to me.
And lastly in this wing, there was some abstract sculptures that were pretty odd and out there. I liked the weird geometric brass and fiberglass works of Antonio Lorens, Enio Iommi, and Gyula Kosice, the cubist guitar player by Pablo Curatella Manes, and the optical illusion construction of a little blue rod actually jutting out of a black and white colorfield by Jesús Rafael Soto.
After the Latin American wing was a special video exhibit called Tongue Cut Sparrows by James Drake. Normally because of time constraints I tend to avoid video art even though I'm sure there's a lot of it I'd like. This one caught my attention though because the subject was just so fascinating. The artist learned that women partners of men locked up in an El Paso jail had developed an elaborate system of homegrown sign language to communicate with each other from across the street. Drake then gave these women texts from great works of literature by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Cormac McCarthy and asked them to translate the works into their sign language, and he filmed them in high contrast black and white. I loved the story at the heart of the piece as I'm a fan of both love and linguistics, which these videos offered in spades.
The next gallery was art from the ancient world, which tends to blend together for me, but I really enjoyed these male and female matching clay effigy figures.
Up next came some medieval European art with lots of religious imagery, strange senses of perception, and creepy clouds filled with disembodied baby heads. I think that last one was intended to be more cherubic than blood-curdling but it missed the mark slightly in that regard.
Then the Renaissance came along and while there was still plenty of religious imagery and weird babies, the general sense of basic perspective and human anatomy exploded out of Italy and across Europe. The majority of the paintings were later Renaissance Italian works, but they also had some Flemish masters, French and English painters, British Tapestries, and even a Greek Sculpture or two. My personal favorites were a scene of a woman stabbing herself with a face like it was the most blase thing in the world and a painting of a monk casually resting his elbow on a lion. I'll be honest I didn't take as good notes for this wing as I did with the others because I was getting a little tuckered out, but it's all still nice to look at.
Last but certainly not least was Ellsworth Kelly's Austin, designed specifically for the Blanton and erected in 2015, the same year the artist passed away at the age of 92. This 2,715-square-foot stone chapel is the only building Kelly ever designed and it can't help but feel like a culmination of a lifetime of work. The stained glass calls to mind his color field works, the black and white stations of the cross his earliest abstractions, the monumental totem at the chapel's center his sculptural work, and the whole thing together brings back the early architectural sketches of European churches he made as a student. It was really an amazing accomplishment. I don't know if it was the last piece he completed, but it doesn't make for a bad send off if it was.
After the Blanton, I took a little stroll around UT's campus taking in the sights. I wonder if they like football in Texas?
If you could get out of the shadow of the coliseum, it was a really beautiful campus with lots of big open spaces and art all over the place.
The other building looming large over the campus was my next destination, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
I started my visit by checking out LBJ's office.
I actually went in through the wrong door to get to the bathroom so I started in the basement and worked my way up to the museum proper. Along the way though, I walked by a pretty impressive mural of the only first lady with lady in her name, Lady Bird Johnson.
I eventually did find the correct entrance and got to begin my visit to the Library and museum. The first item on display was LBJ's presidential limo. As you can imagine, given how Johnson came to be president his limo had the most top of the line bullet proofing and security measures even including a private phone line in the car to secret service which wasn't exactly commonplace tech in 1963.
The real start of the museum though was a long hallway lined with all the pens LBJ used in office, one for each of the hundreds of bills he put into law as part of his plan for the Great Society. It's a powerful visual especially given that the trail of pens culminates in a photo of LBJ and MLK together signing some hard won Civil Rights legislation. LBJ made a lot of mistakes to be sure, but his legacy of domestic policy is one of the most incredible, far-reaching, and progressive of any president we've ever had. A lot of his work was continuations of things he started with Kennedy, but most were wholly his own. The museum said that the night he was sworn in as president, he sat down at a desk and didn't get up until he had the entire Great Society mapped out. He was finally in a position where he could enact his ideas for combatting societal evils of poverty and discrimination that had percolating in his brain since his earliest days in public service teaching elementary school to impoverished Mexican-American children on the Texas border. He had 30 years of political experience from the local levels up to both houses of Congress, he had an encyclopedic memory for the weakspots and district needs of most of the legislative branch, and the president had just been shot on National television giving him a rare moment of all too brief near-universal bipartisan support, all of which he was determined not to waste. From day one, he doggedly pursued his plans, used all of his considerable leverage and the swell of public support to enact almost all of his progressive laws with shockingly little compromising. If that were all he had done, he might have been considered one of the greatest presidents of all time, but alas his legacy is much more complicated and messy.
I give the museum a lot of credit for not shying away from the complexities of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man and the president (though they do spare some of the more graphic details of his personal behavior). The introductory video really nails it, describing him as man of many contradictions. He was brutish but sweet, brilliant but vulgar, amazing domestically and disastrous abroad. He had no problem psychologically destroying political opponents, but he would do everything in his power to look protect the rights of all voters. He was a loving father, husband, and grandfather, and also a disgusting philanderer who makes Trump, Clinton, and JFK all look tame in comparison. In short, he's a mess of a man to pin down, but the museum did an admirable job anyway.
To me the coolest thing in the museum was LBJ's extensive collection of recorded phone conversations from the oval office. By all accounts, he was absolutely obsessed with the telephone, and if anything wasn't happening that he wanted, he had no problems calling up senators directly at any hour. And he recorded everything. His records make Nixon look loosey goosey. I couldn't believe some of the conversations that you could just sit and listen to. The museum's collection included fascinating conversations with famous figures like MLK, John Steinbeck, Bobby Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. You can listen to him bend opponents to his will in real time which is nuts. A senator was supposed to have a bill written up for LBJ, but he tried to get a little more money for his district out of the president, but LBJ doesn't even let him finish talking before just savagely cutting him down saying, "That's not your job. Your job is to have that bill written up on my desk, or you get nothing." You can also hear the other side of his persuasive powers as he unabashedly flirts with a female reporter saying things like, "You have such a beautiful voice my only regret is that I can't hear it in person." I never understood how such a gross looking man reportedly had so many affairs but he could be charming when he wanted. The most amazing phone call of all, that I think does highlight all the best aspects of LBJ, is when a distraught Jackie Kennedy calls him barely holding back tears, still reeling from Jack's death. Lyndon is positively tender (not an adjective I ever thought I would used to describe LBJ) comforting her, while praising her own abilities and strengths in a way that really shows he knew and cared about her as more than just his colleague's wife. I thought the sweetest thing he said was, "I'm going to need your help, Jackie, going forward. I'm going to depend on your support. How many women can say that two different presidents depended on them?"
The rest of this floor traced Lyndon's early life, though other exhibits would go more in depth. This was more a highlight of major moments and interesting artifacts. I had no idea how humble his beginnings were, growing up on a ranch in central Texas. He worked himself up, putting himself through college by teaching in underserved segregated Mexican schools. When he graduated college, he entered politics as a legislative secretary for a Texas representative, while he put himself through law school. He later ran for and won his own seat in the House of Representatives. He had a successful tenure, but the surprising distinction I had no idea he earned was that he was the first member of Congress to enlist in active military duty after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. He served in the Navy in the South Pacific, went on bombing missions, and sent reports back to Washington with detailed demands for ways of improving conditions for the soldiers there, still using his political persuasion even in the midst of a combat zone. After the war he went to the other house of Congress, winning a controversial Senate election. Within five years, he became the youngest senate minority leader in history. He was extremely ambitious (some may have even said power hungry) and he was always looking to have as much influence as he could. Other more random highlights from this exhibit included a signed letter by the Smothers Brothers apologizing for making fun of him, because they actually appreciated a lot of his policies that just didn't make for good comedy. Outside of the comedy world, the Smothers Brothers have been sort of forgotten from popular culture sadly, but they had one of most influential shows of all time essentially creating modern political satire (people just didn't make fun of politicians on TV before them), pushing content boundaries, and launching the careers of Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Super Dave, and Rob Reiner.
The last thing on this floor of the museum was fascinating but also very creepy: an animatronic talking LBJ. The actual LBJ quotes the freakish machine said were excellent displays of Johnson's wit and humor, but the way it moved and looked was totally in that uncanny valley of being close but not close enough to anything human which somehow makes it more disturbing than if it were just blatantly inhuman. I like the idea that the museum definitely thought this would be a good selling point for kids, but the only kids I saw go by were super freaked out.
Another highlight was a big poster with a space left out for you to give yourself the Johnson Treatment, Lyndon's patented intimidation technique of using his looming 6 ft 4 frame to completely dominate other people's space. You can see the original photograph in the top right corner of a cowering congressman being subjected to the treatment. One friend of LBJ described getting the treatment by saying, "You knew when you felt Lyndon's breath in your mouth, you were finished."
Up next came the actual library component of the library and museum which contains over 45 million pages of historical documents including all of LBJ's personal papers. The walls on either side of this monumental collection boasted some impressive engraved stone portraits of LBJ and his famous colleagues.
The next gallery was a nice way of contextualizing the impact of LBJ's Great Society, by showcasing items from several celebrities who either benefited from or contributed to his social programs. One historian said that part of the reason LBJ's more positive legacy frequently gets overlooked is ironically because they were so far reaching and foundational in their scope that a lot of Americans just assume we always had these things. Job Programs, Social Security, Health Care, Civil Rights, and Education were expanded and revolutionized under Johnson to the greatest extent since the New Deal, and when basic fabrics of a society get improved the effects become common place and easy to overlook. But to the first groups of people to get these social services, their full impact was definitely grasped, and by highlighting these notable success stories I think it makes it more tangible just how powerful LBJ's social impact was. Like without educational programs he initiated in inner city areas, we'd never have Oprah. How crazy is that? They weren't always perfect, but LBJ's Great Society laws really powerfully illustrate the potential positive force politicians can have. And if any more economically conservative folks were wondering, LBJ actually added less to the National debt than just about every president after him, so let's cut the crap calling social programs economic drains. If they're run right, which I will give you is historically a pretty big if, they actually tend to benefit the economy because investing in people, increases the likelihood that they will succeed, give back to the economy, and not cost money in continued assistance or worse prison. Johnson's experiences working with poor immigrant communities made him realize that people can work hard and want to succeed, but if they're never given the proper societal tools (or you know actively discriminated against and economically disenfranchised) it tends to be a herculean effort. Think of all the potential great minds we don't benefit from if all that mental energy is spent just scraping by. I truly believe one of the truest aphorisms, which the successes of the Great Society proves, is that a rising tide really does raise all ships. It's a lot easier to raise up an entire society if you start by raising up the lowest members first. If this little trip up on my soap box hasn't made it clear, I found the exhibit pretty inspiring.
Up next, I went to the main exhibit on the top floor focused on LBJ's tenure as President, warts and all. On the positive side, I was stunned to read that he had the largest single term decrease in Americans living under the poverty line of any president in history, literally cutting the percentage in half which is mindboggling. On the negative side, he made the gigantic and disastrous decision to escalate conflict in Vietnam, hugely underestimating the North Vietnamese and getting into a massively unstable and untenable conflict that destabilized huge swaths of South East Asia and caused countless deaths. As far as mess ups go, it's about as bad as it gets. This was Johnson's mistake to live with and it destroyed him, weighing on him everyday and surely accelerating his death only three years after leaving office. He knew his skills were not in military strategy but in negotiations, and it killed him that he could never organize a sit down meeting with North Vietnamese leadership because he felt if he could get in a room with them he could actually do some good. Who knows if this would have been true, but one pretty disgusting fact that came out later was that when potential peace talks actually were on the table, Richard Nixon intervened and convinced Vietnamese leaders to delay talking to the US until after the 68 election in the hopes that he would be the one who would be president for those meetings and thus get the credit. As much of a stain on Johnson's legacy as his handling of Vietnam is, his foreign policy wasn't all bad, and something that I had never known before was how close we came to World War 3 when tensions between Israel and Egypt almost boiled over into Soviet backed Syria. Johnson talked tirelessly with Russian leader Alexei Kosygin, and helped reach an agreement to keep both the US and USSR out of the conflict. This was pretty amazing, but I guess it makes sense that you tend to get judged more for the wars you do have than the ones you don't, even if avoiding war there really probably saved billions of lives. Because this exhibit was fairly text heavy, as interesting as it was there weren't a ton of great photo opportunities so here's a collection of random pictures of LBJ I really liked. My personal favorites both involve LBJ, a baby and a dog, one of him reading a letter in the pool with the dog in his arms and the baby floating beside him and one of him imitating said dog for the baby's amusement. His family always said the easiest way to bring out the good in him was to put him with children, and then the sweet young schoolteacher would take over a bit for the ambitious old politician.
The next exhibit featured recreations of LBJ's oval office and Lady Bird's personal office. It was nice to learn more about what Lady Bird was up to this whole time, making her pet project the protection and beautification of America's parks and highways.
The other great thing about these exhibits being on the top floor of the Museum was that the view could be pretty spectacular.
Lastly, there was a collection of all the gifts the first family received while in office. These included some great art from all around the world and lots of custom made Cowboy boots. Once a Texan always a Texan. LBJ's horse ranch is actually another popular Texas attraction, but unfortunately I didn't think I'd have the time to see the ranch or the other presidential libraries in Texas (Bush 1 and 2). Having gone to Clinton's, Johnson's, and Kennedy's, I really like these libraries and I wish I'd gone to more over the course of the trip.
After the library, I some maintenance by getting some more much needed coffee at a place called Cuvee Coffee and an oil change for my car at a nearby Jiffy Lube.
Then I got some dinner. I was pretty hungry after only eating that scone earlier, so I decided to get some of that good Texas BBQ. I went to a place called Freedmen's which was supposed to have some of the best in Austin. I instantly fell in love with the laid back vibe of their indoor whiskey lounge and outdoor beer garden. And the happy hour deals certainly didn't hurt. I got the ribs, which were fat, tender, and beautifully seasoned. The house barbecue sauce was also delicious but their dry rub was so good you almost didn't need it. The ribs were filling, but because it was happy hour sandwiches (or sammies as they called them) were only $5. At that price it would be like I was losing money not getting one. Plus I was hungry, and damn they looked good. The bartender recommended the pork belly sandwich and it was maybe one of the tastiest cuts of pork I've ever had. To wash it all down, I got a Thirsty Goat Amber made right in Austin which was a solid malty light beer with a winningly adorable logo. I generally prefer draft, but that little guy made me happy to get the bottle. Somehow this whole feast came out to less than $20! I can't recommend that place enough.
After dinner, I took a little stroll in Sparky Park one of Austin's strangest and most beautiful public parks (which in Austin is saying something). The park houses a former 1930s electrical substation turned outsider art space, as local artist Berthold Haas has transformed the station and the wall nearby into whimsical outlets bedecked in shells, colored glass, metal, coral, petrified and all kinds of assorted items creating a sort of fairy tale grotto. It was really cute and pretty technically impressive to boot. My open mic for the night had been canceled because of SXSW, so honestly the park was really a kind of perfect goodbye to Austin as I made way out of town to rest and write for the night.
Favorite Random Sightings: Sell Us Gold!; Deaf Peds (not sure what it means); End of an Ear Records; Holy Cacao
Regional Observations: Austin lives up to it's hippie status as being the only major city in Texas I've seen with public recycling bins all over the place. Having lived in one of the hippiest cities in a fairly hippie-ish state, I've been very surprised at how not widespread recycling is even though I feel like that's pretty much the least controversial green initiative.
Albums Listened To: Rain Crow by Tony Joe White (a comeback from an old Swamp boy); Rain Dogs by Tom Waits (The first Tom Waits album I bought myself, a game changer for Tom's career and young Joe's musical world); The Ramblers by Deals Gone Bad (a solid Chicago reggae soul album, in Poussey's flashback episode of Orange is the New Black she's got a poster of the album over her bed. I knew she was my favorite)
People's Favorite Jokes:
Right from Animatronic LBJ: A young boy comes up to his mom yelling "Momma, momma, come look I saw a lion". When she goes out to look it's just the family dog. The mom gets mad at her son, "I can't believe you lied to me. Go up to your room and pray to God for forgiveness" The boy goes to his room and when he comes back his mom asks, "What did God tell you?" The boy replies, "God said it looked like a lion to him too"
Songs of the Day:
A supremely underrated storyteller and guitarist
A perfect album closer
A blistering album opener
Bonus:
I didn’t know I could love her more