As mentioned in last week's blog post, we did more than just eat & shop on our vacation. Since it was a trip for my birthday, I got to choose all the activities ... and I chose art museums!!! We went to two very different ones - Rainbow Vomit is a new & trendy art installation and The Meadows Museum is your classic traditional art museum.
Getting to Rainbow Vomit was a harrowing feat. We started the day early and made good time driving in from Oklahoma. We stopped in Buc-ee's to buy lunch and ended up staying way longer than expected. Part of it was because I wanted to examine every snack option & food offering before settling on what I wanted for lunch, and part of it was because it was extremely busy and the lines took forever. I bought tickets for 2pm at Rainbow Vomit. It was about 1:15pm when we left Buc-ee's... 45 minutes is plenty of time, right? Absolutely wrong. 😖 Dallas traffic is terrible with construction everywhere. 🙅😠 Once we realized there was no way we'd make it on time, I called (via Bluetooth in my car... another harrowing feat #ihatetechnology) to ask if we could reschedule our visit. The employee was super nice and said, of course, and moved us to 3pm. We FINALLY made it to the warehouse and ate our lunch in the car before heading in.
Rainbow Vomit is a 2-story art installation. The employee described it as walking into a large comic book. It was pretty big but not as large as our Factory Obscura installation. It was actually quite a bit smaller than I imagined it to be. I knew it was completely black lit from pictures off its website, so I dressed appropriately in neon. I was very bright. 😆 I asked the employee where the public restroom was before we went in. She said to go through the ribbons and there would be a door to my left. The walls were painted to look like a black & white optical illusion so finding the door was confusing. LOL The rest of the installation was very similar in theme. The employee encouraged us to interact with the art and touch/open everything. All the art pieces had a door or window that led elsewhere.
She also told us that the warehouse held a secret, and it was our job to find it. Spoiler alert -- there are several paintings upstairs. If you open one, it connects to a window that opens into another room on the opposite side of the warehouse. Go back downstairs, into the ribbon entrance, push the walls a bit and open the door, then ta-da!! Another room!! ☁🦄☁ The room was awesome. The walls were covered in clouds. The entire room had lights that flashed along to music. This was Wes's favorite room (he said he liked Rainbow Vomit more than other art installations we've been to) and his only comment for improvement is to paint the ceiling with clouds or a scene from outer space. I think it was just painted white. Anyway, we walked around the secret cloud room, and I continued to open everything. At the far corner in a box on top of a pillar were a stack of magnets that signaled that I found the secret! On our way out, the employee asked if we found it. I told her yes and she said we were the first of find the magnet that day!
I really enjoyed our time at Rainbow Vomit. I liked all the art and I especially liked that it was interactive. My only complaint - their website claims that it is the premier destination for selfies and a majority of the other tourists were there solely for photo opportunities. It was sort of weird because they'd pose in front of something that was clearly supposed to be opened but they would just take their picture and move on. Hardly anyone cared to find the secret. One woman and her friends even asked me to just tell them there it was (presumably so they can run to it and post a silly Tik Tok). The social media/selfie age is quite sad. 😬 Rant over. LOL My favorite part of the installation was the ribbons and streamers we walked through to enter the exhibit. There was glitter all over the walls and floor, which was also rad. Wes and I both liked the balloon wall and picked out our favorite balloon.
The next day, we went to The Meadows Museum. It's a small art museum on the Southern Nazarene University campus, similar in size to the art museum at The University of Oklahoma campus. I wanted to go because they had a temporary exhibition of historical Spanish fashion. The exhibit had pieces on loan from the Madrid Museum of Fashion. I was VERY disappointed that I didn't know about this museum when I studied abroad. I feel like I went to every other museum in Madrid... how did I miss the fashion museum??? Anyway, the temporary collection at the Meadows was a bit lackluster. I was expecting several pieces and gorgeous gowns. Besides what I photographed, there were 2 or 3 ladies' dresses, 2 children's outfits and some matador capes. They were very nice and well preserved, but I wanted more! LOL My favorite pieces were the shoes. 👠 They were TINY!! Everything was tiny! I guess humans were much smaller back then, but I never expected they'd be that small. Some of the garments would have been short on me and I'm barely 5'3".
Even though the fashion exhibit wasn't extensive, I am still so so so glad we went because the remainder of the museum was amazing. 😍 The Meadows Museum houses the largest collection of Spanish art outside of Spain and all of the Spanish masters were represented. It was like a miniature Prado. Back in the early 2000s, the Prado had a monthly free-admission day for students. I studied abroad in Spain for a semester, so you better believe that I went to each and every student day. I taught myself a lot about Spanish art history from my numerous trips and I am happy to report that I can still recognize elements in certain artists' work. We walked into the room that housed the Meadows's Greco painting (center right in the photo collage below) and I told Wes, "Hey, I bet that's a Greco. Look at the saint's elongated fingers." Damn, he sure married a nerd. LOL
The museum had a handful of oil paintings downstairs, but the main attraction was upstairs. There were several galleries with religious art and oil paintings. I am not religious, but I was raised Catholic so I can appreciate the storytelling represented by the pieces. Plus, my favorite medium is oil on canvas so of course I'd love everything there. And the attention to detail!! 💓💓💓💓 I stood in front of the painting of the woman in the blue dress holding her shawl (large top left in photo collage below) and stared at it forever. Her clothes looked so real, and the sky is gorgeous. *drool* There was so much to marvel at. The Meadows had a couple of pieces by Goya, Valezquez, and El Greco. There was 1 DalÍ and a few Picassos and Mirós. It was seriously like a mini-Prado!
It was so great to go to Rainbow Vomit and The Meadows Museum. They were both spectacular but so different. I love how art can express so many things and make you feel so much wonder. It was a wonderful birthday trip. I'm crossing my fingers that we can do more travelling in 2022. 🤞
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