I spent the last few weeks in Malta and now came to Frankfurt. There are things to prepare here this week. Back in Malta I was giving guest lectures, joined the Malta Photographic Society and got to know a nice little creative network called the Malta Creative Collective which is brining together people from various creative industries. Also, there were some events related to Valletta being the European Capital of Culture 2018. Some individual performances were not too bad. But all over, at least at the moment, this appears to be an uncoordinated melange of procured contributions and "Maltese Humpapa". At least it's lively though. Perhaps it becomes better in the high season. Frankfurt yesterday had it's coldest night of this winter at below minus 10 Degrees Celsius. That's very late, given that by the meteorological calendar spring is at the gate. However, the sky is blue and it is a nice and crisp atmosphere. I also took the chance to finally see Vermeer's Geographer in the Städel Museum, and strolled through the Rubens exhibition hosted there. But Rubens is not so much my thing. Or perhaps it's just because I only arrived from Malta and couldn't appreciate further seeing obese women. I liked his painting of Prometheus though, and recalled one of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's better poems. I also revisit the Jil Sander exhibition in the Museum of Applied Arts, specially to look into the garden design again, which is outstanding. A very nice discovery for me became the Arthouse Movie Theatre at Roßmarkt, where I watched Phantom Threat, and this was an enjoyable break from digging into Bayes Theorem and Marcov Chains for my Saturday Quant lecture in Mannheim.
Yokohama 1868 - 1912
Excellent exhibition at the the Museum für angewandte Kunst: early photos, prints and sketches from the time Japan was opened to foreign influences, and reformed subsequently. Curated by Stephan von der Schulenburg. It is still on until January 29th. A pity I missed all the lectures and workshops, which came along with the exhibition.