I call this blog The Maniacal Traveler because I have a mania for travel in all its forms.  Visiting museums, wherever they are, is a sort of super-condensed travel, or tiny travel. The Peabody Essex Museum – established by the sea captains of Salem, Massachusetts in 1799, before the notion of a museum even existed — is a tiny travel dream because of its rich history, its amazing collection, and its innovative and quirky special exhibits.

Case in point: Recently, I pulled The Seal out of school to travel to a world of guitar-playing zebra finches in the special exhibit, from here to ear, by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

In the exhibit, 70 or so zebra finches fly and flit around a large space and land on various Gibson Les Paul and Thunderbird bass guitars set on posts about three and a half feet off the ground.  When the finches perch and peck on the guitar strings, they make music, of a sort, in a fascinating display of human-animal collaboration.

This museum photo shows the birds gathering on the guitar. When we visited, the finches landed in ones or twos on the various guitars, producing some interesting twangs. At one point, a bird pecked at a string, producing something akin to a song. A museum staff member explained that sometimes the birds are more interested in perching and pecking than other times, but what they choose to do is very random (photo from PEM website).

This exhibit, a perfect hook for getting a teenager into the PEM, was pure delight.  After a 30-minute wait, we were led into the aviary-like space where the zebra finches flit about, hang out in their small basket condos, or hop around on the floor.  At times I had to be careful not to step on a bird, although I’m guessing that the finches are adept at avoiding feet.

Finches flew so close to my head that I could feel the wind generated by their flight on my cheek.  At one point, a female pecked at my leather shoes and, finding them hospitable, hopped onto the top of my foot, and began to groom herself.  She hung out there for about five minutes, while a group of males clustered below and chirped for her attention.

No filming or photos of the exhibit are permitted, but this clip from a similar exhibit that Boursier-Mougenot mounted at the Barbican Centre in London shows the birds in their most active mode:

I’m sorry to say that this special exhibit ends on April 13 (and the free-but-timed tickets have been sold out on weekends for a long time), but I will look for Celeste Boursier-Mougenot  and birds in the future, wherever they may land.

I especially liked how the exhibit challenges our ideas about “art.” We often say that we want “out-of-the-box thinking” to build things and solve problems, but when we encounter  such thinking in the world of art, we often dismiss it as gimmick or nonsense. Kudos to Boursier-Mougenot  and his birds for their playful work in breaking the boundaries of artistic boxes.

A related exhibit, “Beyond Human: Artist-Animal Collaborations,” remains open through September. This exhibit features the work of photographer William Wegman, well-known for his whimsical photos of his Weimaraner dogs with costumes and props, as well as that of more obscure artists who do things like work with hissing cockroaches that “paint pictures” or play a Japanese flute in harmony with howling wolfs.  (The artists adhere to specific ethical guidelines in working with their animal collaborators).

William Wegman’s “Platform Shoes”, 2008 (PEM website).

My favorite here was German artist Corinna Schnitt’s short video of a floor-level view of animals mingling in the her living room: cows, goats, a donkey, ducks, a parakeet, a cockatoo, a rabbit, and the family cat.  In the background, a llama seemed to be raiding the kitchen.  The exhibition note explained the video might stimulate us to think about our own interactions in similar spaces.

I’m not sure if the film made me think more deeply about mingling at a cocktail party, but it sure was fun.  The ducks seemed like little busybodies, butting into the business of the goats and disturbing the zen of the rabbit.  The cow, frankly, seemed out of her element, especially when she tried to horn in on a conversation between two goats.  The cat calmly sat on a chair, perhaps observing the behavior of her fellow creatures, or perhaps wishing they would all go home.  Now that I think about it, I have been to a few parties like that.

The collections at the PEM originally were generated by the 18^th and 19^th century world travels of Salem’s sea captains, and include art and artifacts the Far East, the South Pacific, and the Alaskan coast that were preserved and cataloged long before any other Western institution recognized these items as art.

Sir William Pepperrell, painted by John Smibert (sometimes Smybert) in 1746.

For me, there’s something amazing and wonderful about looking at art or objects that connect me to the distant past. (I wish I could touch them, but understand why I can’t). In the first floor American Art gallery, the massive 1746 John Smibert portrait of Sir William Pepperrell, the hero of 1745 siege of Louisbourg and  a one-time “king of Kittery,” took my breath away, even if the gallery security guards drew a blank when I asked where his portrait was located. William who?

William had stood for this portrait, had looked at it, had touched it.  At one point, the portrait had hung (I think) in his home–just down the road from my house! And now I was meeting it, in the flesh (in a manner of speaking).

The Yin Yu Tang Chinese house at the PEM deserves its own post, but I will mention it here.  Almost by happenstance, in the late 1990s, when the Museum had an unusual  opportunity to purchase, transport, and rebuild a 200-year-old traditional village merchant’s house, they grabbed it, as part of an ongoing effort to facilitate cultural understanding of China.

In the late 18th century, the house had been carefully assembled in a very complex Lego-like fashion, with each piece carefully labelled.  In 1997-98, museum staffers and their Chinese collaborators carefully disassembled the house down to the last timber, tile, and brick, then transported it in 19 containers to Japan, then to New York, and then by truck to Salem, where it was rebuilt (over several years time) on the Museum grounds. It opened to the public in 2003.

Yin Yu Tang reflects 200 turbulent years of Chinese history, right down to a circa 1960s small speaker that was installed by the government in one of the main rooms to broadcast news and propaganda to the occupants several times a day.

Two lion carvings on the front of the house, intended to ward off evil spirits, were deliberately defaced by the owners during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s so as not to attract the attention of authorities who had outlawed such carvings as superstitious.

A wealthy and unloved relative who had taken over certain rooms as payment for a debt was relegated to the second floor after the Communists gave his rooms to two peasant families.  This man, disliked by his relatives for his mean-spirited personality and castigated as an evil “landlord” by the Communists, died of hunger in the house during the famine of 1960.

The website devoted to Yin Yu Tang offers a great preview as well as detailed information about the house, its inhabitants, and the disassembly/reconstruction process.

Thus, in one day, I traveled to a world of esoteric music and animal art, to colonial Kittery, and to China, and even made a quick stop in California circa 1920-1965, to an exhibit on the art and influence of California design.  I spent two hours (roundtrip) in my car, and, thanks to my library pass, $10 on admission fees (kids under 16 are free).  A big world for tiny travel and a good day’s of journey for a maniacal traveler.