Feb 17 - San Antonio Museum of Art

Our friend, Mary Hogan, is training to be a docent at SAMA and took us on a great tour today.  Since it was just the three of us, we got to hear some very interesting stories not shared with the regular tours.  The eyes above are from an Egyptian anthropoid coffin.

The iridescence on this small vase came from many, many years of being buried underground.

This is a drinking bowl and the eyes are meant to startle other drinkers into not drinking too much.

Greek children probably learned the Greek alphabet with the help of figures like this female phi and female alpha.

This is one of my favorite rooms in the museum.  It is both eerie and beautiful.

The Romans must have had tiny appetites.  The plates in this photo are only about three inches in diameter.

I took our granddaughter Alex to SAMA when she was four or five and after we'd toured the entire museum, I asked her what she liked best.  She liked the elevator!  It is impressive - all glass and nearly completely silent.  Alex wanted to be an artist from a very early age and did enjoy the art, too.

This bowl may not look like much in this photo but if you could see it up close, you would see that all the marks in the background of the bowl are actually tiny little butterflies.

One small room was devoted to a Chinese cricket exhibit.  One thousand years ago the affluent Chinese kept crickets for fighting and for music and built elaborate homes for them as well as coffins, beds, arenas, duplexes, and special cages so the singing crickets could be taken on strolls.  Singing crickets were called "Golden Bell" crickets.  Fighting crickets were not allowed to fight so long that they would be hurt.

This cricket house is made of a gourd that was wrapped as it grew.

Cricket-sized food and water bowls.

This intricate and impressive mandala is one of only four in museums in the United States.  Mandala's are normally destroyed after a few days but permission was given by the Dalai Lama #14 to preserve this one.  A vaporized glue, settled over the sand and pigment of this 5x5' mandala, made it possible to move the mandala without destroying it.