Vienna: Albertina Museum.

I've been to a lot of art museums over the past seven months. But this was one of the more surprising ones for me.

The Albertina Museum sits in the city center, along with a lot of other museums. I was pulled towards this one for a visit with my limited time in the city because of a Michelangelo Antonioni exhibit on Blow-Up.

Blow-Up is a movie I had to watch in my film classes in university. I even had to write a paper about it because it was deemed so by one of the my professors as being "ground-breaking." I didn't doubt that it was. But back then, I was only taking the film classes as part of my major with an intention of working in broadcasting. So I gave both the film and the paper the usual half-assed attention I usually did in order to secure my "B" in the class.

(No one can ever accuse me of being an "academic." Only a street-smart hard-worker.")

Anyway... As I am now 15 years out of university, I actually find the movie very relevant with today's society. The voyeurism... The capturing of life whether people want it or not... It's clear that Antonioni's obsessive look at how capturing moments on film can be misinterpreted, let alone intrusive, was ahead of it's time.

I guess I was less paranoid in college to really get into the film.

But now? I've downloaded it on iTunes to watch again later tonight. And the exhibition was fantastic.

I stayed in it for nearly an hour.... Watching the film scenes... Looking all of the reference photographs for the characters... Reading about Antonioni's approach to capturing the mood...

I even tried to take photos of the experience... But you are not allowed to take photos in the Albertina, as I learned.

After being in the dark with the exhibit, I ascended to the upper floors to look at some more well-known works from artists in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The first was a series of drawings by Alex Katz.

Then I went to the next floor with the older artists..

Plenty of works by Picasso. Seems like everyone has something of his. And they had a few of Monet's pieces, which I hadn't seen yet. There was also Renoir... Munch... Matisse... And a few others.

By this point, I was two hours into the museum, and didn't have the energy to visit the top floor to see the Albrecht Durer exhibit. But I definitely enjoyed the hot pink bunny on the ground floor...

Massive!

The Antonioni exhibit alone made the visit worthwhile.