Ausflüge

Yesterday I went on two excursions with different art classes. In the morning the class on Art and our Biosphere went to the Botanic Gardens. The gardens are extensive and beautiful. This sculpture of a shepherd with his lamb was in the 'European' section. The students in this class are a mixture of design and art students and we toured the gardens with the research leader whose enthusiasm for this garden was boundless.
Olive trees don't grown at this latitude (54N) but the olive tree in the Botanic Gardens is in a glass house which is on rails and which can be rolled off the tree in summer.
In the afternoon I joined another group going to the Hamburg Art Gallery. We saw an exhibition of the work of Sigmar Polke called 'Wir Kleinburger' [We Bourgeois] in the Gallery for Modern Art. Our Professor (shown here with his jacket over his shoulder) had known Polke, had been a student of his for a time. We then all traipsed through long corridors, up steps, through a restaurant, down steps, through more galleries to get to the main building and an exhibition called Nicolai Abildgaard, Der Lehrer von Friedrich und Runge. [Nicolai Abildgaard. the teacher of Friedrich und Runge.] I stood in front of the famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich called Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer [The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog] and asked our Professor 'Did Friedrich paint lots of pictures with this motive?".
'No," he replied, "this is THE picture!"