Long Night of the Museums

Photos are here! (And for once Picasa uploaded them in proper time order...)

It isn't actually called 'Long', but I saw it somewhere else and thought it was a fun title. The basic premise is simple - for a 12 Euro ticket you get unlimited entry to 49 museums in and around Frankfurt between 7pm and 2am, with free buses, trams, tourist railway and ferries laid on.

I headed into town around 2pm to meet Z, who had texted me earlier. The weather was stunning, and we got some ice cream and managed to find a nice park to have it in. We headed back towards the main street to see if we could catch up with some other friends, but didn't in the end. Our favourite place, the Japanese restaurant Iroha, was closed between lunch and dinner so we had some pasta nearby instead. Z went home to do some songwriting and I went to buy my ticket, determined to go even if no-one else was.

Next stop was the riverside, where I finally got onto to one of the Primus Line ships that plys its way up and down the river, going east or west along the Main for 25 minutes before turning around, docking and going the other way. I got a ticket for the whole 100 minute east-west trip and enjoyed it immensely. I had decided to take my camera without the large bag to stay light, so of course the batteries started to run out as soon as I got on the ship, and I had no spares. I can always take the cruise again - it was only 9 Euros. There were fantastic views of the city, as well as the working ports and coal-fired power station. And just the joy of being on the water.

Two fit young men were attaching banners and lights for the Night of the Musuems on the side of the boat, all done with plastic ties. There was also what appeared to be a stag party on board, who descended into the first area I chose to sit in, so I moved on and ended up on the top deck with no seat, but that was fine. It was unfortunately also the smoking area, but when we docked to go the other way I managed to get a seat right up the front.

Once we got back to the riverside, it was getting chilly and I decided that although it was nearly 7pm I had better get something to eat. I headed back up through the Romersplatz and was rather dismayed at the massive queues outside the History Museum and the ticket stalls. I went back to Iroha, now open for dinner, and there was a slight misunderstanding (I was at a table for two, and the waitress who hadn't seated me thought I was waiting for someone and so didn't try to take my order) that cost me some time, but the food is always lovely. Fortified with teriyaki chicken, miso soup with mushrooms, rice and tea I headed back to the riverside.

I had done my plotting in the restaurant and decided to hit the Film Museum and Architecture Museum to see the anime exhibits I hadn't seen before, then the sculpture museum and finally the big one - the Städel Museum. The Primus Line were in action again as the free ferry for the night, so I hopped on and was whisked across the river to a pier just in front of the Städel Museum. I headed back up the way we'd come to get to the Film and Architecture Museums, which are conveniently next to each other.

The Film Museum exhibit was very good, with a section on different types of anime (shoujo, for girls; shounen, for boys; seinen for adult men and others) and also on European-Japanese co-productions that flourished in the 1960s. I recognised many series I'd seen as a kid in France there and it was nice to see them covered. It was a basic introduction, but an excellent one. There were also cels (hand-painted images on acetate sheets that are used to film the animation) for a number of series, including Kiki's Delivery Service and Mononoke Hime. And at the exit was a full-motion trailer for the computer game Final Fantasy XIII, which looked very impressive. (Link to video for Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII Versus)

The exhibit in the Architecture Museum was much more specialised, and focused on the Metabolist group of avant-garde architects active in Japan in the 1960s and how many of the urban landscapes or particular buildings in anime resemble their designs, particularly the skyscrapers lowering to become underground stalactites during attacks in Evangelion, or the prayer hall in Akira that looks like something by Kenzo Tange. They were showing anime in rotation in a secluded section of the room - in the middle of it - with Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion, Akira and others. There were also magnified panels from X-1999, a manga and anime by CLAMP which features the destruction of real Tokyo landmark buildings. It was very nicely done, and did a great job of linking the urban landscapes in anime in with these utopian architectural movements, even if it was very specialised.

I stopped off for a coffee in the ground floor bar, sent a text message to himself and Dad (who would no doubt be amused at the thought of being in a museum at 10pm) and had another look at my map.

One thing I have noticed about Germans - and maybe it was only that evening - but they have no concept of being in the way. People stop to talk, sit down, or just for no visible reason in doorways, gangways, staircases and narrow paths. And they have no compunctions about shoving in when they want to get somewhere, as I found when getting on and off the boat (no need to give way to your elders, they'll get there first) and when I was shoved into a doorframe in the sculpture museum by another older lady. The younger man behind her kindly let me past. Unpleasant memories of special exhibitions in Japan.

I walked past the Städel Museum again on my way to the sculpture museum, and there was still a queue, as well as a huge number of people eating and drinking on the lawn outside. The Liebieghaus, to give the sculpture museum its proper name, is fairly small but well laid out, and in a sense a perfect size as you stay interested throughout. Most of it is middle ages religious art with a little Asian religious sculpture. I'm not mad on religious themes, but there was one Pieta that was quite moving, with Mary's face shadowed by a scarf with an expression of quiet despair.

There was a good arrangement of exhibits that linked the different styles - unfortunately I managed to walk through some of it backwards - including Baroque, which was defined as initially a pejorative term for something over the top or grotesque but gradually gained a more positive meaning. The figures are huge and mighty and use poses from theatre, and the gloss on the walls explained it in terms of religious figures needing to create a greater impact on the common people to aggrandise themselves. The birth of spin?

I walked back to the Städel Museum, and there was still a queue. I was getting tired and wasn't sure I wanted to take it on, so decided to skip it and instead make for my back-up museum, the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, the modern art museum, which according to my (2004) guidebook had some Roy Lichtenstein. I was treated to the always impressive sight of the Primus Line doing the equivalent of a handbrake turn on the Main before boarding and being ferried back over to the north side of the river. (Ferries are right up there with trams, funiculars and cable cars as my favourite ways of getting places.)

On the way there, walking through the back of the still-heaving Romersplatz, I found another museum with a display of women impressionists, so detoured into the Schirn Kunsthalle. There were a large number of paintings and drawings by each of four artists, and again I went around it my own way (although they didn't seem to be arranged in any particular order that I could see) so I had fun guessing what year the work was from by how the artist evolved into and out of a classical impressionist style. Some of the impressionist/pointillist paintings were amazing, and two of the artists developed a very detailed pen and ink style afterwards, as if in reaction to the soft-focus impressionist style.

I didn't find any Roy Lichtenstein at the Museum fur Moderne Kunst around the corner, but from the museum website it seems they change around up to half the rooms every 6 months. What I did find was a huge exhibition of works by Bernard Buffet, which was very, very interesting. His 'Horrors of War' looked like an updated vision of hell from Bruegel, his self-portrait looks astonishingly like Jamie Hewlett's Murdoc from the virtual band Gorillaz, and he paints the most unsexy naked people I've ever seen.

Finding even one artist I like in a modern art museum is something for me, and I wasn't that interested by anything else, including frame-shaped bits of string and photos that if they were taken by anyone else would have been binned. A band was playing 1950s and 1960s French cafe music downstairs, and the building itself was very nice, all big and small spaces and brightly-lit white walls which woke me up a bit. I staggered out at 12:45am.

The Starbucks in Romersplatz was still open, so I got a (very mediocre) hot chocolate and made my weary way home. Threw all my drying off the bed onto the floor (there's something wrong with the dryer in the building so everything came out damp) and goodnight Frankfurt.