Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful pieces of art I’ve ever seen was at the MFA Boston when I visited in 2008. I was thinking about it this afternoon, and I decided to try my luck at tracking it down. Well, impressively enough, it didn’t take very long. The MFA website includes a great search system. Initially I went through some old exhibitions thinking it was impermanent. Then I saw the advanced search and after a few unsuccessful results pages I found what I was looking for. I love a museum with an online and full-bodied catalog!

The work is titled Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism and it was crafted by Josiah McElheny. I won’t post the pictures or information directly here, and I’d like to point out that it is because museums are notoriously uppity about that and the effect can be quite chilling, but also because they do have such a nice set of high-zoom pictures and the description on their own site. http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=503178

The work consists of a multitude of handmade glass objects, with a mirrored opalescent finish, and these are inside of a a glass box that is made of one-way mirrored glass. The effect is that you get to look into an endlessly repeated world without seeing yourself. Very cool, very beautiful. I’m glad that I know it’s a permanent part of the collection as I would love to return and see it again. I could build an entire house around it it’s so wonderful.

Anyway, there’s your cultural enhancement for the day. There’s a really great segment about him in the PBS show art:21 (season 4 I think. It’s on Netflix instant if you have that. I’m going back to work. I would also like to mention that Caribou’s latest album Swim is really quite good and you should check it out (for free!) on SoundCloud here: http://soundcloud.com/caribouband/sets/swim and then consider buying it. And one more thing about buying music online, 7-digital really needs to do better than crummy mp3s, and Amazon as well. I don’t like supporting iTunes, but I hate waiting for cd’s even more in this digital era.