Saturday, November 20, 2010

2010 11 20 - On Tour: Ice Sculpture Museum

On this rather rainy/snowy/raw Saturday we checked out the Gallery of Russian Ice Sculpture.

Gallery is a very elegant term for the corrugated tin building building that houses the Ice Sculpture Museum. The building looks like one that houses tractors and other large farm equipment - you know the very unassuming glorified sheds that are typically in some sort of dull green or yellow color. The building is identified as the Gallery of Russian Ice Sculpture by a plastic banner hung from an awning.

It is a bit of an eerie sight as you approach the museum in the dreary wintry mix of the night - once the time change occurs, any time after about 4:30pm can pretty much be defined as Night in Moscow (note: Dreary Wintry Mix can define a lot of November days in Moscow as well)

The Staff on the day of our visit isn't particularly helpful either - but at least they didn't make Billie Jo and I wear special suits to enter the museum. Yes, to enter the museum you need to wear suits - not to keep you warm but to shield the sculptures from your body heat.

I was pretty happy to not to wear the special cloaks - in all the promotional materials it makes it look like everyone is in a cult - given the remote location and sketchy appearance of the building I was fearing that we might be tricked into quaffing a mystical kool-aid potion and getting beamed onto a passing comet.

Staff (a single disinterested young woman - similar to my dates in the early 90s) also did not let us know that there was some sort of TV or movie shoot occurring within the small museum.

Despite all the above, and the lengthy trek to get to the gallery it was pretty cool to see:

Billie Jo at the IceGirl

There was also a throne to sit on next to the PopOut - I had Jo sit on that cold slab for about half an hour while I took her picture - she was not pleased.


St George Slaying the Dragon


Billie Jo next to the Ice House

You may notice that she is asking, "What is this room?" - I explained to her that is called a kitchen.

Ice Butterfly
Me with Giant Ice Faberge Egg

1 comment:

Jo said...

Did not like the kitchen comment.