I feel very fortunate to live within driving distance of the Knights of Columbus Museum. It's a very good museum and it's FREE including parking! You don't have to be Christian or Roman Catholic to enjoy high quality art (although some basic knowledge of Catholicism and Christianity can aid in the enjoyment of the exhibits).
Today (Feast of the Holy Family) I visited the 10th annual Christmas creche exhibit at the museum: "Buon Natale: Creches of Italy". (Buon Natale is "Merry Christmas" in Italian). Since today was "Family Day" the place was packed. I think I got the last parking space. Got to see some of the staff I recognized from all past visits (Don says he's retiring to FL this Spring). They were serving apple cider, coffee, and Christmas cookies.
The exhibits also included the 14th annual Christmas Tree Festival. These are trees decorated by area Catholic elementary schools. Always interesting to see their creativity.
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| Land of the Giants: Constructing the diorama (view from the back) |
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| Full size diorama (front side) |
This year the creche exhibit was in the two main exhibit rooms on the main level. The sizes ranged from table top to life-size to a 120 square foot diorama. Many of the creches, including the large diorama were created by Bottega D’Arte Presepiale Cantone & Costabile from Naples, Italy. They were involved with the 2014 creche for the Vatican.
If you can't make it to the museum before the exhibit closes on February 1, I suggest checking out the links for the web pages (see above and below) as well as the museums's Facebook page to get a taste from the pictures and video clips and links to a couple newspaper reviews (with pictures). [I normally stay away from FBook (evil) but there are more pictures there and some lost souls more frequently habitate FBook than
Upstairs was another interesting exhibit, 50 Years and Counting: The Knights Tower & Carillon. This was a very tasteful pictorial history of the construction of the bell tower and carillon at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Unfortunately, the gallery at the museum's web page doesn't do justice to the exhibit. Fortunately, someone saved an old version of the National Shrine's web page about the tower and carillon which is easier to read than the current page and also has more historical pictures. I've been to the basilica and highly recommend visiting it if you enjoy church architecture.
So after a couple hours, I had seen all the major exhibits and quickly walked through the rest of the museum (and verified it was still there). What is ironic (and telling) is that many RCs that I have met in the area have either never taken the time to visit this place or have no idea it exists. What a treasure they are missing but I guess that goes without saying.
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Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Family http://www.kofcmuseum.org
http://www.kofcmuseum.org/km/en/exhibits/2014/creches/index.html
https://it-it.facebook.com/CANTONECOSTABILEPRESEPI
http://www.artepresepiale.it/index.php?lang=en
http://www.presepepiazzasanpietro2013.com
https://www.facebook.com/kofcmuseum
http://www.kofc.org/common/imagegallery/gallery_dir.html?l=en&id=album-1222
http://www.nationalshrine.com/site/c.osJRKVPBJnH/b.4764131/k.C64E/Carillon.htm
http://www.kintera.org/site/pp.asp?c=etITK6OTG&b=1204295
http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2013/05/my-visit-to-basilica-of-national-shrine.html
Written Sunday 28 December 2014
