Becky's photoblog

Our visit to the Brooklyn Museum reminded me that I keep running in to copies of Frederick MacMonnies’ ‘Bacchante and Infant Faun‘, one of my favorite sculptures.

Just for fun, here’s a list of all of the versions of Frederick MacMonnies’ Bacchante and Infant Faun that I know of

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City  – the Met apparently has MacMonnies’ original bronze sculpture, 1893–94, cast in 1894. The Met’s page on the Bacchante
• The Boston Public Library – a bronze version of the Bacchante is the centerpiece of the fountain in the courtyard. my photoblog entry
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – a bronze version of the Bacchante (cast in 1901) used to be in the MFA’s main lobby, and in 2010, it was moved to the MFA’s new wing. The MFA’s page on the Bacchante
• The Brooklyn Museum – marble, 1894
  – the Brooklyn Museum’s page on the Bacchante
  – my photoblog entry
• The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA
• The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in Hartford, CT – bronze, 1894
• The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, Pasadena, CA
• The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA – bronze, 1895
• The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL – bronze, 1894

The description of Bacchante and Infant Faun from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website (emphasis mine)

“Modeled by Frederick W. MacMonnies in Paris in 1893–94, “Bacchante and Infant Faun” epitomizes the dramatic quality of the French Beaux-Arts style that dominated American sculpture during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The sculpture captures a nude young woman in exuberant motion, her right toes on the ground and her right arm holding a bunch of grapes high over her head. Her left knee pushes upward in a dancing motion, and with her left hand she secures a nude infant sitting in the crook of her elbow. MacMonnies first presented the bronze statue to the American architect Charles Follen McKim in appreciation for a fifty-dollar loan that had facilitated MacMonnies’s trip abroad in 1884. McKim intended it for the courtyard of the neo-Renaissance Boston Public Library that his firm, McKim, Mead and White, had designed for Copley Square. After a great storm of public protest stirred by temperance unions, clergy, and other angry Bostonians against the statue’s “drunken indecency,” McKim withdrew the gift and then offered “Bacchante” to the Metropolitan in May 1897. The Board of Trustees enthusiastically accepted it, and the bronze was displayed for many years in the Museum’s Great Hall with other examples of modern sculpture. Because of the statue’s enormous popularity, numerous reductions of it were cast in two sizes. There are also four smaller bronze versions (68 in. H.), two large marble replicas, and three other located over-life-size bronzes.”

The Brooklyn Museum was on a very short list of museums that neither of us have ever been to, so we spent the afternoon there before heading to Stamford. Not my favorite museum, but still worth it just to see where the opening scene of a Rick Riordan novel took place.

My favorite part was the storage closet! The museum has a visible storage area where visitors can see how the museum stores the parts of the collection that are not on display. I SO need a closet like this!!

After leaving the hotel, we crossed Massachusetts – from East Boston to Williamstown (the furthest north-west corner of MA) – and arrived with enough time to begin our honeymoon with a brief visit one of our favorite museums: The Clark Art Institute.

While the galleries are closed for renovations, they’ve installed several pieces from the collection in a salon-like exhibit, where paintings were deliberately thrown together with paintings from very different times and places. One of the things I love about the Clark is the examples of images of women in their collection – instead of royal portraits, or portraits of women with their children, the paintings in their collection show women who have thoughts and skills (this maybe isn’t the best selection of my favorites, but you get the idea).

Please click here for my photoblog entries for our visit to the Clark Art Institute in

• May 2008 and 
• April 2009

I’m so excited about the new exhibit at the MFA! So excited that I showed up a day early … 

Today was a personal day and after a full day of errands, I had about an hour to run over to the MFA and check out the new exhibit. I guess I got my dates mixed up

But at least I was able to peak through the glass 🙂 I had a moment all to myself viewing the exhibit from a nearly empty corridor. There’s definitely something creepy and beautiful about seeing ancient works of art perfectly lit for viewing with no one looking

I couldn’t see the Aphrodite exhibit but I could visit the rest of the museum. This is probably my favorite room in the new American Wing. It’s curated to mimic the Paris Salon. Nothing beats the combination of white marble, red walls and gold frames.

Apologies for the picture quality … this was taken with my camera a few weeks ago

mmm Chihuly

I was taking a handful of shots of the Gardner Museum’s new building, but I got distracted by the gorgeous fall foliage. How fabulous is that color?

Looking at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum across Evans Way Park

The new greenhouse (slanted glass on the left), the new entrance and lobby (green panels in the middle), and the new special exhibition gallery (the cube on the right). The new building will also contain a new performance hall, gift shop, cafe, classrooms, offices and a lounge for me and my fellow volunteers 🙂


From Palace Road, you can see the new cafe, and the patio for outdoor dining. Beyond the patio, you can see the glass tunnel that connects the new building to the historic palace. Above the new cafe is the new performance hall. 

This is the view from the 5th floor of the Simmons School of Management looking towards Boston Latin (on the left) and Back Bay (on the right). I took this shot just before the lecture by one of the Gardner architects on the design, materials and techniques in the Gardner’s new building. I’m so excited about the new building – just a few more weeks until I get to see the inside 🙂

On our way home from visiting B’s family in Stamford and Fair Haven, we stopped at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford

I would have paid the price of admission a few times over just to see this painting. Orazio Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes.

Brian and I took a daytrip up to Maine to see an exhibit on impressionist landscapes, which was wonderful. This is the view into the special exhibition gallery from the 2nd floor.

I love this room – and this brings me back to my very first photoblog post (10/13/07). This is the sculpture gallery at the Portland Museum of Art.

very cool rock sculpture thingy. brian took this shot through a wreath in the window

a few rooms in the PMA, looking towards a portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s nephew

After we had our fill at the museum, we headed in search of a good meal, and found exactly that at this place – i think it was called Bull Feeney’s. This shot doesn’t do it justice, but the light coming through these huge windows was really amazing. For the record, the authentic Maine seafood chowder and parmesan crusted haddock sandwich with citrus aioli sauce was also really amazing

gratuitous silverware still-life

Long Wharf

This is Brian with a licorice pipe after we stopped at an amazing candy store in Kittery on the way to Portland.

This doesn’t do it justice but the sunset as we drove back was the bluest blue, the orange-est orange and every color in between.

Gwen and I visited Harvard’s Fogg Museum, which will close very soon for 5 years of renovation – it’s one of my favorite museums in the world (and that’s saying a lot, if I may), and even tho parts of the collection will still be on view for the next 5 years, I will really miss this incredible space.

Brian and I got out of town for the weekend and visited some museums in the Berkshires. We went to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, then the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, then stayed the night at The Porches, then we went to Mass MoCA.

Today was bring your whiny kids to the MFA Day. Always worth it though.

On the day after Christmas, I took the train down to NYC to meet Brian and we spent the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Five years later, we did the same thing

It’s 2014, and I’m going back to the beginning of my first photoblog (at photoblog.com/bdaroff), and recreating my old posts on my own site here at beckydimattia.com/photoblog. This post is from our trip to Ogunquit with my sister, parents and grandparents. My grandparents had a time-share up there, and we drove up to spend the weekend taking in the gorgeous New England colors.

Looking back on this weekend 7 years ago, I still remember this vividly. Brian and I had started dating just one week before this, and I remember talking to him on the phone while looking out over Perkins Cove. A dear friend had also lost her father just a week before this, and I remember debating with my parents whether I should fly to San Francisco for the memorial (I did).

I also remember taking a long slow walk along the Marginal Way, and how my dad, sister and grandmother shook their heads and walked on ahead of us while my mom, grandfather and I stopped every three seconds to take pictures. It was well worth it – one of my photos below has been hanging in my office for many years, reminding me of the gorgeous Maine coast and a great day with my family.

We’re all museum lovers, and we visited two museums that weekend – the Ogunquit Museum of American Art (not that memorable for me, except the gorgeous grounds), and the Portland Museum of Art, which I loved. I especially love the room with all of the marble sculptures and tons of light pouring in from huge windows. A year or so later, Brian and I revisited the Portland Museum of Art together.