HOLY RIGHTEOUS COW!! I was going back and forth on where to go for this particular episode and at the last minute decided to make the drive to Ocala, FL. That’s a whopping one hour and 45-minute drive when you head over mid-afternoon. The lucky thing is that the Appleton Museum is open until 5pm! Not as late as I would like, but you get an additional hour than most museums (if not all) museums in Orlando. However, I figured we all deserved a trip outside of the metropolitan area and actually explore – part of the point of this podcast and blog! And when I say I was blown away and flabbergasted…. I mean it. I’m not one to easily be surprised. This seemed like a great way to end our first season of Museum Musings!!

You can listen to this episode on Spotify and Google Podcasts.

So how did I find out about this museum? Thanks to one of the members stopping by to visit my museum, I decided to search it out. It’s a good almost 2-hour drive outside of Orlando. Prep your Spotify playlist because you will be driving through very uninspiring lands. However, the museum has a SUPERB Pre-Colombian collection (this, given my limited knowledge of artifacts). Yes, the Maya cannot be escaped but they also incorporated a little bit of possibly Chimu and Inca as well. And they were nice large pieces. We’re not talking about lots of little bits of pieces of broken pottery or anything like that. You can see the full design and really appreciate the artwork. But they also have a decent exhibit of African artifacts from Nigeria. Furthermore, you can see that they tried to bring you full circle with a cultural dive into Roman art and Egyptian art, a little bit of Italy with the Etruscans being represented, and a lovely Asian wing.

For a small museum, and maybe this is due to its association with the College of Central Florida, this is a REALLY exciting museum. A lot of the item descriptions say they were part of Mr. Albert Appleton’s collection. Appleton owned and ran an electric company and invented quite a bit of things, to the tune of 160 patents. Which brings me to the question of “How did he get all of these things?” A video in the Albert Appleton Auditorium happened to mention that if Appleton wanted one item from an Antique shop and the shop owner said that he needed to purchase everything in the display, then Appleton would do so. I’m a little dubious about the history of the items but that’s the anthropological side of me getting into gear.

I came solely because of their “Paper Thin and Shadow Deep” exhibit. This exhibit is on artist Hiromi Mizugai Moneyhun and is on display through June 18. FANTABULOUS!! I’ve been saying it’s good to go knowing what is exhibited and plan your visit so that you can maximize your experience. But I never do that, and it tends to pay off, so I won’t push it too hard because this visit gave me a jolt of serotonin I wasn’t expecting. First off – Moneyhun artwork seems to mostly consist of paper cutting. She makes large wall sized art pieces by cutting paper. This is sculpting on another level. Forget chiseling away at a piece of rock, which can become a science after a while, I think. PAPER. She is a paper surgeon – the level of preciseness that she needs to have. They placed the work against white walls which is good, because white is a great aid in showing contrast, and with the title being about shadows, I get it. But a colored wall would have been amazing to see how that would work. White walls seemed very typical, and this felt like it needed an extra punch. I still loved it. I just felt like they pulled back. I missed being able to take advantage of a talk she gave, but I would love to watch her process.

I sat in the first portion of the exhibit and just started writing this episode. I wanted to capture every raw emotion that flowed through me. Her Kaleidoscope piece, actually every single one of her pieces, is like a never-ending gift of discovery. I initially thought, “what was she thinking when she was putting this together? What was she feeling? How did she know where to place the lines and cut, and that it would work out the way it did?” I just sat there and soaked it in. It’s paper cutting, but I was entranced and giddy. I looked at the faces of the women she depicted, and it seemed like there were pieces of me in every artwork. I was hoping there was something from the exhibit I could take with me, but unfortunately there wasn’t. This is definitely an artist that I would say, keep an eye out for, but also stay in the know with what the Appleton Museum is doing. It’s the quiet museums that you don’t hear about that push the boundaries and really have a pulse on what the community is interested in.

This is the last episode of Season 1 of Museum Musings and it has been wonderful time. Thank you for joining me on this journey. We will be active on Instagram, and the blog from time to time. If you want to keep up with us and not miss out on when we come back, you can sign up for the quarterly newsletter right on our website. We can’t wait to meet you all again in September 2023!