Today's update:


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A Visitor's Experience: National Museum of the American Indian
An article by Bill Grandy

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A Visitor's Experience: The Minneapolis Institute of Art
An article by Craig Johnson

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A Visitor's Experience: The Art Institute of Chicago
An article by Sean Flynt

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Event Report: Armour Research Society Workshop, 2006
An article by Jonathon Janusz


As always, you can see our Complete History of Updates listed right from our home page.

These updates are a big part of what keeps me coming back to myArmoury.com. As i have expressed before, I think this site is becoming one of the premier resources for arms and armour. These narrative museum reviews are valuable in that they educate the reader on what to expect from a visit, and serve to remind us that in addition to reading, an in-person experience with period weapons and armour is equally valuable--Oakeshott and his many colleagues in the field did not become experts on reading alone! Thank you to the contributing authors and to Nathan for the great new articles.

As you can see, we're really adding to our Visitor's Experience series. I'd encourage anyone who has a museum visit planned to contact us about adding to our growing series.

The same goes for event reports. There are many events, conferences, and shows that are worth reporting on to the arms and armour community.

:)

I live in Southern Minnesota, and frequently am in the Twin Cities for business. I make it a point to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Arts whenever I can make it work timewise.

I will be up in that area in a week and a half and plan to take this all in again. I have not had the chance to visit New York or Chicago in order to have a comparison, but the total collection of the MIA is amazing in its depth and breadth.

The arms and armor exhibit that Craig wrote about sounds fantastic.

This particular museum is very well balanced, containing art and artefacts from the Classical World, Asia, and Polynesia. The collections also include vibrant paintings from the Renaissance period on up.In addition to these, the MIA has a very good Egyptian collection(My favorite), including a wall from a tomb. One can get close enough to see the tool scratchings within the heiroglyphics.

Im not likely to do more than repeat what Craig said. If you find yourself stuck in Minneapolis, this is a must see.

I just realized that we can also welcome 2 new authors for this site: Craig Johnson and Jonathon Janusz.

Welcome, guys!

Thanks for the welcome, Chad :). I hope my draft wasn't too hard on you ;)

This was fun; I hope to do it again sometime.

Very good update. I was at the Chicago Art Institute last March with my university art history class and was able to spend several hours in the arms and armor room.

Sean, did the Art Institute still have the altar piece ca. 1390's on display? When I was there I spent a good deal of time studying it. I found it very interesting to see the depiction of the New Testament (at least with regards to the birth and crucifixion of Christ) in 1390's clothing as well as arms and armor (although I am familiar with the tendency in medieval artwork to depict Biblical stories in contemporary dress).

I just saw this collection at the Art Institute about 4 days ago. It was really interesting.

I was looking at the article talking about this collection, and there are two groups of pictures. In the first group, the first picture is of a miniature cannon. I saw it when I was there, and now that I'm seeing it again, I've forgotten the actual name of it. Does anyone know what this is really called besides a miniature cannon?