MN Day 2- Sweets, Science, and Sculptures
Today started out with my cousins, my sister, and I checking out one of the most celebrated and creative bakeries in the Twin Cities, Angel Food Bakery and Donut Bar. As soon we walked in, we were greeted with wall to wall confections of the highest orders. The pastries sometimes defied gravity with their intricate but somehow still fluffy forms and the icing and glazing was vibrant and eye catching. We could see pretty immediately why so many swore by the place.
With an embarrassment of riches, I went the simple route with a festive Fourth of July themed frosted vanilla bean donut and an iced coffee. My cousins were a bit more adventurous getting smores and peanut butter cup donuts that looked delicious, but I think it’s a true testament to how good a bakery they were that even my relatively basic donut absolutely knocked my socks off. A great way to start the day.
Next up we worked off our donuts a little bit by walking around the city sight-seeing a bit (which seems crazy in a post-Covid world). We had promised our Aunt Tina we would try to find the statue to Mary Tyler Moore which was erected on the spot where she throws her hat up in the air at the end of her titular show’s theme song.
I’m not sure if these were what Tina had in mind, but we took some photos with the bronze comedy legend for her (clearly in neither photo did my cousin Kevin get the memo of what everyone was supposed to be doing):
After paying our respects to Mary Tyler Moore, we made our way to the other Twin City of Saint Paul to visit the highly recommended Science Museum of Minnesota. As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a monstrous Tyrannosaurus Rex. Right next to the big boy, they had a smaller skull with a lever so you could get a feel for the actual force behind a T-Rex bite which was both very cool and slightly horrifying.
One of the other immediate eye-grabbers in the lobby was a giant net hanging from the ceiling attached to two air cannons that visitors could use to launch balls flying through the air. As you can see from my cousin Kevin’s loitering in the photo, we were all excited to use the cannons, but we felt like it would be unbecoming of adults to not wait until the various children in the lobby got their turn first. It was a bit goofy, but it was very fun.
The main special exhibit while we were there was dedicated to massive recreations of famous building through Legos, so the lobby was filled with smaller but nonetheless impressive lego sculptures from local students in the Twin Cities area.
Along one wall was a giant kinetic sculpture called Pipedreams I by Bruce Shapiro, which consisted of 16 tubes filled with water hooked up to air valves. The artist created a computer program that would open up the air valves in specific sequences to create images with bubbles. There were several pre-set images (click here to see an impressively symmetrical diamond), but the one I caught in my photo is a of giant “X”. It was a very creative way of taking something as commonplace as a bubble and doing something totally new with it.
To get to the museum exhibits, visitors walk up a musical staircase, something that used to delight me at Boston’s Museum of Science when I was kid. Unlike in Boston though, this science museum’s staircase also happened to be next to a 60 foot tall giant astronaut, initially sculpted for Coachella by an LA-based arts collective called Poetic Kinetics. It certainly makes an impression.
The first gallery we visited of the museum’s permanent collection was dedicated to the Mississippi River. This started with an impressive collection of rocks and minerals from the banks of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. My favorite parts were a beautiful collection of polished agates and an assortment of different minerals carefully assembled into a glorious slice of pizza.
Situated in corner of the exhibition was a full Mississippi River Towboat. It was cool getting to look at all the fancy controls inside the boat, but the best part was when you go to the top deck of a boat that’s already five stories up, you’re gonna get a pretty spectacular view over the Ol’ Miss.
Next up was a collection of artifacts related to the wildlife of the region including bird bones, horribly-named turtles, jars of amphibians, and disgustingly large insects:
My favorites from the animal collection included: the shell of a sea star like creature called sea biscuit which is conspicuously not a famous race-horse; a mysteriously mummified squirrel monkey that was discovered in the air ducts of a department store (it’s suspected that the monkey must have either escaped from a pet store that operated nearby or from a tropical rainforest themed display that the store put up in the 1960s and then got stuck and became mummified naturally but nobody knows for sure which is crazy); and multiple (!) two headed turtles including one named Emily who lived in the museum from 1973-1977 winning visitors over with here perseverance and very haphazard feedings.
Next up was a floor to ceiling display of sands from the Great Lakes, the rest of the US, and over 100 other countries around the world. It doesn’t sound particularly interesting, but it was such a weirdly fascinating visual seeing just how many varieties of sand there were of such vastly different colors and granularities. It makes sense that the mineral content would vary from beach to beach, but I never really gave much thought to sand before so it was pretty surprising seeing so much side by side.
One corner of the gallery was dedicated to the fish and fishing of the Mississippi. This didn’t necessarily dictate that museum hang up a giant fish seemingly sculpted out of trash fished from the river, but bless them they went right ahead and did it and it was the only thing I could look at it.
The next display was a funny collection of various items that were fished out of local sewers presumably after their previous owners accidentally flushed them down the toilet. Items ranged from money to toy dinosaurs to glass eyes each of which came with a funny fake Latin name.
From there we went down a floor to what was probably my favorite exhibit entitled Weighing the Evidence which brought together items from the collection of the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. The gallery was hilarious and horrifying in equal measure as it delved into various quackeries from the past 200+ years of human history and the combinations of conniving and gullibility that allowed them to succeed despite an overwhelming lack of evidence. Some of the various swindles and snake oils were so ridiculous it was hard to believe anyone could have fallen for them, but then you realize how many people fall for fad diets and internet conspiracies and it’s a little disheartening to think how little has really changed over the years.
Some of my favorite sham cure-alls included: machines designed jiggle the fat right off ya with vibrating leather bands; a machine called the Rejuventaor which looks deceptively like the actually effective medical device, the Iron Lung, but in reality is just a tube filled with magnets, radio waves, and infrared lights to “reverse the aging process” (obviously); a vibrating chair created by founder of Kellogg’s cereal to shake loose all your poo and keep you regular; a glass tube that would generate violet light and mild electric shocks advertised as “sugar-coated electricity” to supposedly cure just about everything; “foot batteries” to generate a magnetic field that would supposedly make your blood flow better; and far too many products including teas and water just filled radium from when people thought it was a magical wonder-drug as opposed to a radioactive substance that would likely make you much more sick.
I think my favorite medical flimflam was something called Orgone because it was the perfect mix of being supremely silly without also being seriously dangerous. Essentially Orgone was just nothing, but somehow Wilhelm Reich, the man who “discovered” Orgone, managed to convince people that he had stumbled onto an invisible, odorless, universal life force energy vaguely and titillatingly related to the orgasm. He couldn’t in any way prove its existence (he somehow convinced Albert Einstein to help him try, but Al found no evidence and eventually asked Wilhelm to please stop sending him letters or mentioning his name in association with Orgone. In response, Wilhelm wrote a book called the Einstein Affair), but naturally that didn’t stop him from selling various products to accumulate and channel Orgone including goofy plastic hats, empty boxes with funnels attached to them, and bigger empty boxes where you could just sit and soak up the Orgone. It was so insane to me that Ol’ Wilhelm seemed to barely even try to make his treatment seem plausible, but enough people seemed to buy into the whole crazy Orgone fad (including the writers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and J.D. Sallinger!) that he ended up going to prison for continuing to sell his scam product after the FDA asked him to stop deceiving people. I don’t know if idea of people just sitting in empty boxes with silly hats on their head for potentially hours to be “healthier” is more funny or sad, but I’m glad to know that it was a thing that happened in this world, and Wilhelm Reich’s bizarre and wild life went on to inspire songs by both Patti Smith and Kate Bush so that’s something.
Other highlights from the exhibit were truly alarming vintage ads for products designed to either cause weight loss (with sanitized tape worms, obviosuly) or, if you prefer, to “make children and adults as fat as pigs”.
Many of the less dangerous sham treatments had interactive elements, and my sister, Lauren, was brave enough to try out a mind reading machine (strong Back to the Future Vibes) and an Orgone Accumulating Box. When I was researching this post, I read that Wilhelm Reich insisted that people sit in Orgone Accumulators completely naked which the museum conveniently did not mention, though I think that was probably in the best interests of all the visitors’ comfort levels.
The next exhibit was dedicated to the marvels of the human body. A lot of the information was definitely geared to be accessible to younger visitors (my cousins John and Elizabeth are also both physician’s assistants so I would think this was especially not new to them), but the curation was creative and interactive enough to be pretty delightful to people of all ages. Some highlights included: a massive winding network of pneumatic tubes with flowing red liquid to put the sheer scope of the circulatory system in perspective; an interesting if very alarming exhibit about the microbes that might live on various parts of the body (“groin” being an example of what I can only imagine must have been a heated debate in the curatorial department about where the line between being scientifically accurate and being too gross for the general public lies); a cute artist’s rendering of the different kinds of tissue as a jazz quartet; and a hand that seemingly belongs to the world’s unluckiest giant as its used to demonstrate how various ailments and injuries affect the body.
One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was a station with different glasses that show you how eye-sight develops from infancy to adulthood. It was both genuinely interesting to learn about and it made visitors look silly, what’s not to love?
The big ticket item of the exhibit though was an authentic Egyptian mummy that was donated to the museum in 1925 and has been a popular attraction ever since. I feel like you don’t normally get to see mummies so exposed and it was another thing that walked the line between grotesque and astounding. To compliment the mummy, they also had a small collection of other cool Egyptian artifacts, the most unexpected of which was a very well-preserved mummified bird.
Walking to the next floor of galleries we were all really taken in by with a fun and funny collection of wooden automatons designed by artists Paul Spooner and Matt Smith. As stationary sculptures, these wooden figures were already impressively but charming, but at the push of a button a hidden clock system would spin and bring them to life in weird and humorous ways. It was just a small collection on a stairwell, but my cousins and I really got sucked into seeing what they all do and it pleasantly reminded us of a particularly great clock (with a wind-up version of the 12 Apostles) that was at our cousin Andrew’s wedding reception venue.
For pure creativity and visual wit, I think my favorite automaton was this wooden animated puppeteer who when wound up would also wind up his own smaller puppet:
The next exhibit was all about doing various science experiments. It was very cute, but it was definitely a spot where we didn’t want to take away opportunities from all the little kids who clearly liked this section the most. That being said, their was an area where you could create an impressively large tornado out of water vapor and it was pretty spellbinding even if you weren’t the one playing with it.
Next up was a series of interactive displays about different mathematic principles. I think we were maybe all a little unfairly biased against this exhibit because the mathematics exhibit at the Museum of Science Boston is one of the best museum exhibits ever, but it was still plenty enjoyable and if this is the only science museum you knew you would probably love it even more than we did. I did really like this sort of surreal forrest scene they had to demonstrate perspective, because you had to arrange the figures in a certain way for the shadows to create a scene that looked realistic (but if you happened to want a scene with giant rabbits or foxes it’s not like they had anyway of stopping you which was part of the fun).
Next up was a sports-themed exhibit, explaining the science behind various physical activities. This was almost like a slightly more educational arcade with basketball and football throwing challenges, high jumps, and dancing areas. My favorite was a game where you could sprint against virtual opponents ranging from professional athletes to silly mascots to an impossible to beat T-Rex. I think we had a lot of fun being silly in the game (see below), but there was at least one trash talking little kid who was pretty heart-broken that he couldn’t outrun a T-Rex even after he talked a really big game.
The last of the permanent exhibitions was dedicated to the prehistoric world, and started with a pretty impressive cross section from a giant Douglas Fir, which has been playfully nicknamed the “Tree Cookie” for obvious reasons.
I think we might have gone through the exhibit backwards starting with more recent fossils and displays of humongous pre-cursors to modern mammals:
The big boys did not disappoint though and the recreations and assemblies of various dinosaur fossils were hugely impressive and a constant reminder that it’s nice, as a species, to no longer be in the hell that is the food chain.
My favorite parts of this exhibit were a display about a giant prehistoric flightless bird entitled “‘Terror Crane’ or Overgrown Vegetarian?” (either option is a hilarious thing to call anyone) and a display of ancient mammals featuring a stuffed sloth hugging a rhinoceros ancestor. Whether that sloth was placed there by the museum staff or a whimsical visitor, we had no clue, but the mystery just made it more fun.
Last but not least, was the special exhibition featuring truly astonishing skyscrapers made out of Legos. The twenty towers on display are incredibly faithful recreations of modernist skyscrapers from all over the world built from over 1.5 tons of Lego blocks by a certified Lego professional (one of only 14 in the world) from Australia named Ryan McNaught and his team. Each tower was an incredible work of miniature architecture, though I will admit that there was definitely a certain amount of anxiety that one of us would somehow trip and ruin hours of meticulous labor.
There were also tables set up for visitors to start working on their own Lego towers after being inspired by the handiwork all around them. It was really fun and a cute way to engage kids who might not otherwise be quite so interested in the architectural elements of the exhibit. The tables also do a great job demonstrating the sheer size of all the towers when you see them looming over a dozen or so children.
After scienceing up a storm, we decided to get some lunch at an incredible St. Paul pub called The Happy Gnome (they’ve since rebranded to The Gnome Craft Pub which seems more fashionable but much less whimsical). Give or take how you feel about gnome-themed decorations (I’m for it!), it was basically a perfect pub. The food was hearty and comforting (they even had vegetarian options so my sister’s arteries were not left out of the clogging) and the tap list was over 60 beers deep which was both overwhelming and incredible. I went with an insanely decadent burger piled high with cheese and fantastic pulled pork and complemented with fries that hit the sweet spot between crispy and fluffy. To wash the whole thing down, I got a dangerously strong and rich Russian Imperial stout from Minneapolis’ Surly Brewing called The Darkness. While it was not a beer you could or should drink quickly with it’s high abv and velvety texture, it was a positive explosion of flavors and a wonderful thing to sip whenever you got winded from eating your beautifully monstrous burger.
After lunch, we had to make my English major cousin, Kevin, happy by swinging by the birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a few blocks away in suburban St. Paul. It was a cute house, but definitely still a residential area, regardless of any literary history that may have been born there, so we didn’t feel totally comfortable actually stopping and gawking at a place where people currently live so it really was just a quick touristy drive by. Luckily, whereas we failed to take a photo, Google Images has not let us down:
Our next stop in St. Paul was an incredible antique store/ art gallery called the Center for Lost Objects, where genuine antiques are nestled amongst curated oddities and local work. When we would all hang out in MA, it was not uncommon for us to get sucked into odd antique shops and just lose an hour or two marveling at just how bizarre people can be and just how valuable other people have decided their weirdness is. It was a real treasure trove with the whole huge floorspace filled with things that were either impressive, horrific, beautiful, or some combination of the three.
Some of my favorite finds included: a tableau featuring an actual stuffed toad just pounding back tiny beers at a little wooden bar; a possibly self-aware (and very possibly not), rustic art print of a Fancy Black Cock; a urine color chart to check if you’re properly placed in a hilariously ornate frame; and, lastly, possibly the most alarming representation of Mr. Peanut ever sculpted.
Across the street from the Center for Lost Objects, we all got a kick out of seeing a law firm that took their whole aesthetic from Saul Goodman’s firm in Breaking Bad, a decision that really makes me think they’ve never watched the show because boy is that not a good legal role model.
After our antiquing, I desperately needed to use the bathroom so we took a slightly panicked walk up a few blocks to a cute liquor store and market called the Beer Dabbler. They let me use the bathroom, and they had cute local art to boot so it was definitely worth the pitstop.
Next up, I refueled my depleted caffeine engines with a stop to a trendy coffee shop called the Creator’s Cup, which had strong brews and sleek artsy interiors to put some pep in your step.
Reinvigorated we made our way to a fun natural oddity called Wabasha Street Caves. These ominous caverns formed naturally out of large rocky plateau outside of downtown St. Paul, and they really lend a real fairy tale like quality to the otherwise quite residential neighborhood. They also happen to have a storied history to go with their fantastical appearance, as they’ve served as everything from silica mines to mushroom farms to an illegal subterranean Speakeasy during Prohibition, most recently hosting discos and other events, though they’ve since closed to public sadly.
While we couldn’t go inside the caves, we did stumble across some great public art while exploring the nearby area including a mural right out of Arthurian legend and one of the several statues of Peanuts characters the city has put up to honor St. Paul legend, Charles Schultz. The one we came across was his most famous character Carlos Brown.
After a lovely day in St. Paul, we made our way back to the other Twin City to pay a visit to the world famous Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The garden is affiliated with the Walker Art Center, but it’s free to the public and offers 11 acres of beautiful gardens and wild modern art sculptures. We had perfect weather for our stroll through the gardens and it was a really fantastic combination of art and nature.
The art was impressively varied in style and content so even if something isn’t your cup of tea, you never know what’s around the next bend. My favorite pieces included: the stoically ordinary Walking Man by George Segal; an abstract bronze form entitled Reclining Mother and Child by Henry Moore (who also has the distinction of creating the earliest works on display in the gardens); a haunting face hidden in an otherwise abstract construction by artist whom sadly I didn’t note; a simple round sculpture by Gary Hume humorously named Back of a Snowman; a strange and beguiling sculpture by Kiki Smith called Rapture in which a naked woman seems to emerge like a rising phoenix from a slain wolf; a quietly evocative little assemblage by Cuban artist Kcho entitled La Soledad (The Lonliness) featuring a single chair improbably elevated on heavily worn oars to add a sense of migration to the lonely scene; a very strange, almost insect-like archway made of ten, multi-colored, branching steel legs by the Irish artist Eva Rothschild; a bronze sculpture by Thomas Schutte that seeks to imagine the traditional reclining female form as if someone sculpted it out of clay and accidentally sat on it; bizarre but impressive sculptures called September Rooms by Mark Manders which combine delicate human features with rough industrial forms for a slightly jarring effect; a cute and dynamic sculpture by Barry Flanagan of hare gallantly leaping over a giant bell; a musical sculpture by Pierre Huyghe in which the artist filled a tree with 47 wind chimes custom built to play every note in John Cage’s piece Dream but in whatever random order the wind decides; an MC Escher-like piece by Sol LeWitt featuring cinder block columns arranged very carefully into an X (a simple form but one you rarely see made out of columns so it sort of messes with your perspective in a surprising way); a giant-scale spinning mobile by Alexander Calder; a beautiful glass pavilion filled with colorfully flow-y hanging fabrics; an untitled piece by Jim Hodges in which he seemingly just arranged four large boulders into a square until you walk into the center and find that he’s outfitted each boulder’s inner side with neon colored stainless steel so that all the stones gently reflect each ad infinitum; a hauntingly lovely sculpture called Without Words by Judith Shea which impressively re-imagines different element of a traditional figural sculpture (the clothes, face, and torso) as separate but linked sculptures in wildly different styles; and Mark di Suvero’s massive stainless steel tripod entitled Arikidea which, despite looking quite precarious, is actually so sturdy the artist has attached a swing hanging from the center for visitors to play on.
Probably the two most famous sculptures in the gardens though are Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen giant pop-art fountain in the form a cherry sitting on a spoon and Katharina Fritsch’s lovably goofy 25 foot high blue rooster entitled Hahn/Cock. I’d probably seen the most photos of these two prior to my own visit, but I have to admit they were very charming and I was really excited to learn that the stem of the cherry actually spouts out a constant mist of water so (even if you can’t tell from my photos) it ends filling the surrounding area with rainbows depending on how the light hits it.
Last but not least, for another fun interactive element, their was a deceptively simple piece entitled Black Vessel for a Saint by Theaster Gates which features a 20 foot tall cicular tower made out of bricks of black granite. The building looks quite solid and sturdy, but when you walk in you find out that half the roof isn’t filled in and it creates a neat eclipse like effect along the black reflective walls.
After a long day of adventuring, we promised my cousin Katie we would make an effort to find fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July, which we would normally spend at the beach near her parents’ house. We found a spot in nearby Edina that was supposed to have a good fireworks show which also happened to be within walking distance of a fun looking brewery so we decided to uber there to get ourselves into a state of maximum fireworks enjoyment.
We pre-gamed the fireworks at a spot Wooden Hill Brewing Company. They had a deliciously creamy Nitro stout, and, while I wasn’t hungry enough for a full dinner after my massive burger, I did snack on some tasty grilled chicken nachos while we drank and hung out.
It was a perfect way to spend the evening getting to spend the holiday drinking good beers and cracking jokes with my family, but the best part easily had to be getting this incredible photo of my cousin Katie in the midst of enjoying one of the brewery’s hot dogs.
The walk proved to be a little longer than we had anticipated to get the fireworks but in the end we were not disappointed and we got to end the night with a bang.
Favorite Random Sightings: a sign proclaiming “2 Barbers to Serve You” (very oddly formal); Todd the Axe Man (not mincing any words here); a store simply called the Liquor barrel.
Regional Observation: I thought the combo architecture and street art in Minneapolis was so creative and fun.
Albums Listened To: 1967: Sunshine Tomorrow by the Beach Boys (a great collection combining the album Wild Honey with some live recordings and takes from the Smiley Smiles sessions)
Joke of the Day:
One night, a drunk comes stumbling into a bar and says to the bartender: "Drinks for all on me including you, bartender." So the bartender follows the mans orders and says: "That will be $36.50 please." The drunk says he has no money so the bartender slaps him around and throws him out.
The next night the same drunk comes in again and orders a drink for everyone in the bar including the bartender. Again the bartender follows instructions and again the drunk says he has no money. So the bartender slaps him around and throws him out.
On the third night he comes in, the drunk orders drinks for all except the bartender. "What, no drink for me?" replies the bartender. "Oh, no. You get violent when you drink."
Songs of the Day:
A window into a funkier more psychedelic version of the Beach Boys. The crowd is hilarious
Just a ridiculous way to end an album
Bonus Surreal Song and Video by Kate Bush about a real thing Wilhelm Reich (the Orgonon guy) used to do with his son where they’d try to shoot the rain out of clouds: