Edmonton adventures 03

[yuuago]

So! Today was Museum Adventures.

I went to the Royal Alberta Museum. I was not prepared for how huge it was! Took quite a while for me to go through. A lot of the general concept behind the human history exhibits was familiar with me, so I tried to go in approaching it as if I were someone unfamiliar with Alberta. That made me look at things from another angle and, I think, appreciate it more.

The highlight of the RAM trip was the Bug Gallery, though. It's basically a zoo with living insects and arachnids. They have a wide variety of types; mostly invertebrates from outside Alberta, but some locals as well. I was able to get some neat photos that I might (hopefully) be able to use as reference for some more insect drawings.

Royal Alberta Museum took up several hours of the day, and might have taken up more at another time, except that there currently isn't anything in the Feature Gallery.

And after that I went to the Art Gallery of Alberta. It's much smaller than the RAM, but still well worth a look. My favourite of the current exhibits was Shift, with work by Marie Lannoo and Katie Ohe. Lannoo does paintings and sculpture showing complex light and gradients; Ohe's work is metalic kinetic sculptures that move in a very mesmerizing way. Very interesting experience; the sort of art where I'm like "I don't know if I get this but I really enjoy looking at it".

So, after spending around ~5 hours walking around museums all day, I went back to my hotel and faceplanted, only dragging myself out long enough to go get some ramen at Misoya. And it happened to be very good ramen. Ramen bars tend to be one of my favourites if I get exhausted while traveling - limited menus mean that the decision making will be easy, and it's definitely something that I will want to eat.

Comments

[hokuton_punch]

Oooooooh, those both sound like amazing museums. *________* It'd be hard to drag myself away... And yay for delicious ramen!

[yuuago]

Oh yeah, it was definitely a good time. I expected something a lot smaller!

[kanadka]

Ah!! I missed this yesterday.

The museums sound so cool! The Bug Gallery especially sounds incredible, what a great idea. Did they have any dinosaurs in the RAM? Alberta is one of those provinces that always seems to have a ton of dinosaur bones, but they also probably have dedicated museums just for that. The kinetic sculptures sound especially cool, was it kind of like the feeling of ASMR but for your eyes?

Ramen!!! Ramen is always a fab choice :D

[yuuago]

There were indeed dinosaurs at the RAM! They had an Edmontosaurus (of course) and bits and pieces of others. Though if you want to see dinosaurs in Alberta, I recommend going to the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller - it's one of the largest in the world. Unfortunately kind of a pain in the ass to get to compared to the RAM, though. (Had relatives in Drumheller, went to the museum several times, never got old, wish I could see it again)

re: Fossils, more than dinosaurs they actually had a VERY impressive collection of ice age mammals. Mammoths, early bison, giant sloth etc. A wider variety than what the Tyrell has for mammals, though my memory might be out of date. Apparently there was a significant mammoth discovery at Wally's Beach, Alberta, including rare footprint fossils and so on, and I had no idea until now.

"ASMR for your eyes" describes the kinetic sculptures at the AGA well. Basically once you push them, they just keep going, and it's so smooth and mesmerizing, and a lot of them were very shiny and reflective and scattered rainbows, so it was super trippy. And even the still paintings - the gradients were so gradual, so natural, and you could just stare at them and get lost in the perfect shift of colour, it's like they weren't done with acrylic at all but spontaneously appeared on the canvas.