Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I M Pei

In the East Building of the National Gallery is some support column on which the names of people tied to the building are carved. This would be unremarkable, if not for the fact that the area around I M Pei's name is all stained and dirty from large numbers of hands. We were astounded: do people stand there and think, "Ooo I M Pei," and touch the stone with there dirty fingers because they so love the buildings he designed? That doesn't seem to make sense with what we know about the general population of America.

East Building. Thanks for the picture, wikipedia.














After museum closing hours, we pay our respects to I M Pei. Crazy style. Photo by Jennifer, or she'd be in there too.

2 comments:

Michael said...

If you're interested in the behavior of the people, you should have checked out the outside of the building. The triangular section that comes to a sharp point (it in the extreme right side of your wikipedia picture) is all worn from people touching the sharp point.

Jessica said...

I had read about the exterior-triangle touching, which kind of makes sense. But the greasy-ick around I M Pei's name? Unexpected.