Travels in the 2nd half

    Every city has its own look and feel. When I had the chance to visit Naples for a day, it gave me the opportunity to get a taste of its flavor.  The group I was with started by exploring the historic center of the city, walking from the Garibaldi train station to the Piazza Gesú Nuovo. This trek follows one basic path, but the street changes its name every few blocks, when it encounters a small piazza. The area has a long history as a center of commerce, and it is still home to many stores. While many of the businesses cater to the many tourists that visit this neighborhood, there are also many that have been here for decades, if not longer.  Of course, this center of Neapolitan life has also been home to many churches. One that caught my eye was the Capella di San Michele Arcangelo a Pistes. Its dark open doorway had curtain across it, but it hinted at master work inside, a huge diorama of the life of Jesus. Another was the Chiesa dei Santos Filippo e Giacomo. T...

  The Whitney Museum is the home of contemporary art in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, after an offer of over 500 modern works of art to the Metropolitan Museum and was turned away. In 2014 the Whitney Museum of American Art moved into its third “permanent home”, a brand new building in the Meatpacking district of Manhattan. Today, the Whitney’s collection includes works by almost every major American artist of the 20th and 21st centuries. It also hosts major exhibitions and retrospectives.  photo by Beyond My Ken,  via Wikimedia commons Amy Sherald: American Sublime (through August 10, 2025)   The main show at the Whitney is a retrospective of the life work of Amy Sherald (b. 1973). Ms. Sherald is an African American painter who produces portraits that she describes as simplified realism. She presents her subjects against simple, usually monochromatic, backgrounds. Sherald’s subjects are all of African American descent, but s...