The
new downtown San Diego Public Library opened at 12:00 the day we were scheduled
for a 12:05 tour. We
thought we could park in their basement parking lot about a half hour ahead of
schedule but we were told it would not open until ll:55 so we parked across the
street and used the time to explore Petco Park baseball area and the Padres
store.
The extensive
tour of the library included most of the 9 levels except for the 2 for the charter high
school.
It was amazing to
see what the library offers: book stacks at every level, computers, children’s
area, teen area, art gallery, reading rooms, baseball research center, handicap area, & an auditorium. There are incredible views of the city
from every direction.
An
outdoor café will open soon.
In 1986, the San Diego Chinese Historical Society formed to
preserve and share Chinese and Chinese American history and culture. They
rescued the Chinese Mission building built in 1927 that was designed by the
nephew of famed local architect Irving Gill.
It was relocated and opening in 1996.
With many donations from
supporters.
The director Alexander
and his wife Agnes came from their office to talk with us for a while.
Alex worked with Ed when he donated
some Ming bowls and vases to the museum. A second space across the street has a
modern gallery for rotating exhibits, a library and a lecture hall. There is a
third area for storage and conservation.
We had time to head up to Balboa Park. The Mingei museum had
some new exhibits that were worth a stop.
One new exhibit featured chairs from many periods and cultures from
simple stools to mid-century modern styles by American and
European designers. Another exhibit showed
metal works by C. Carl Jennings that included gates, headboards,
chandeliers and free-standing sculpture.
We also stopped in at the Timkin art museum where they had a
famous Gainsborough painting “A Peasant Smoking at a Cottage Door” on loan from
UCLA’s Hammer Museum. Gainsborough’s Cottage Door will
be displayed together with Corot’s View of Volterra,
painted 50 years apart, to demonstrate how landscape painting changed
at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the We finished the day with
dinner at China Max and later watched a DVD of Don Quixote (Don Quichotte), an
opera by Massinet.
nineteenth centuries.
.
