Oakland Museum, Kirala

After a lethargic morning





The parents and I took Zoe to the Oakland Museum, where they had a special Pixar exhibit. Since Zoe's favorite movie right now is "Finding Nemo", it was a must see. She didn't have much patience for the hand drawn pictures of characters from various movies. However, they had created a beautiful Zoetrope of characters from Toy Story, which was amazing. The large (2 meter?) platter would start spinning up slowly, and then the strobe would turn on, and all of a sudden there were jumping, lassoing and galloping Pixar characters everywhere!

We had a quick snack in the museum cafeteria, where Zoe marveled at the giant koi in the moat

and then we all went upstairs to see some of the permanent collection

There were paintings by a lot of my parents friends there, including Kenji's old friend Charles Farr. A very youthful Charles:

Seeing the self portrait brought back many memories of my dad taking me to Charles' place on Potrero Hill. Charles had a large studio that extended into his yard, and although I was very young, was aware of how quickly he seemed to age. So many good friends of Kenji and Gail were a part of my childhood, that I came to take their presence for granted. It was a shock when they started dying, and I realised that they would not always be there. I think Charles was the first of these. On that cheery note, we looked at a lovely display of the famous association of photographers known as Group f64. They happened to have on display one of my favorite photographic portraits of all time (of Charis Wilson by Ed Weston). As well as some view cameras, and a Zeiss SLR from 1910!



They also had an excellent Diebenkorn section

From the museum, we went home for a quick break before heading to Kirala for Robata and sushi