Culture On The Cheap

Every Wednesday night, Nuremberg's Germanisches Nationalmuseum (sorry, no amount of photo-fixing will make this camera phone shot any better) stays open late and offers free admission, so B and I went down there this past week to check out their latest show Mythos Burg (roughly translated, it means the myth of castles), and it was an OK exhibit that attempted to deflate the notion of castles being full of brave knights and fair maidens-- nope, they were grubby places where a lot of people lived and worked in constant paranoia (castles tend to get marauded a lot), though they had it a lot better than the poor schlubs toiling for them down there in the fiefdom. It featured a lot of materials from museum collections all over Europe, even a minor painting from old master Peter Paul Rubens (note: I'm speaking of this P. Paul Rubens, and not this Paul Rubens), who actually purchased a castle in the 17th century, lived in it, and it tended to show up in his works a lot in the background. Showboat.

While hardly a gotta-see destination the Germanisches Nationalmuseum still has a lot going for it, and it's a place where folks can see old master artwork, a substantial armor collection, modern sculpture garden, an expansive musical instrument (especially from the Renaissance-era) section, artifacts from pre-Roman settlements, one of the earliest globes of the world (Nuremberg was an important map-making city) and so forth. Due to its broad collection-- this isn't specifically an art (or archaeological, architectural, weaponry, etc.) museum, but it still is pretty good. And once a week, it's free-- not too shabby.