Trips that dip into art, music and fine cuisine
Beth J. Harpaz surveys of a few of the latest opportunities to combine travel and cultural experiences.
DETROIT MUSEUM: DIEGO RIVERA-FRIDA KAHLO
“He carried a pistol. She carried a flask.”
So reads an ad for the Detroit Institute of Arts’ upcoming exhibition on the year that artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo spent in Detroit in the 1930s.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit opens March 15 and runs through July 12. The couple spent time in Detroit while Rivera created murals for the museum as a tribute to Detroit’s manufacturing industry.
Related tours and programs are planned, including: Frida: The Opera, presented by Michigan Opera Theatre, March 7-28. Diego and Frida’s Detroit: Bus Tour, March 21 and April 10, exploring the city from Rivera and Kahlo’s perspective through themes that defined Detroit in that era. Visual Biographies: Portraits at Ford House, tour of Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich., April 18, May 2, and May 16, focusing on portraits as visual biographies.
TASTE OF FRANCE
Restaurants around the world will take part in a Taste of France — also called Gout de France — on March 19.
The initiative is designed to showcase French cuisine, wine and heritage.
Each participating chef will offer a menu with a traditional French aperitif, a cold starter, a hot starter, fish or shellfish, meat or poultry, a French cheese (or cheeseboard), a chocolate dessert and French wines and digestives, while highlighting local culture or restaurant specialties.
Prices vary but all participants are encouraged to donate five per cent of proceeds to a local non-governmental organization promoting health and the environment.
Some 1,300 chefs are expected to take part. For a list, visit restaurateurs.goodfrance.com/en/ participating-restaurants.
THE PIANO GUYS
They’ve played in Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon and now Carnegie Hall.
The Piano Guys are four dads from Utah who make music in outdoor settings and have become YouTube sensations with a half-billion views. They’ve showcased places like Utah’s Snow Canyon State Park and they’ve also played at international landmarks like the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil.
They play what’s considered classical crossover, often blending pop songs with classical music, like Let It Go from Frozen with Vivaldi’s Winter, performed on piano and cello in Utah’s Midway Ice Castles.
The St. George Tourism Bureau in Utah collaborated with them on several videos and determined that traffic to the tourism website increased when the bureau was tied to a video.
ALCATRAZ AND AI WEIWEI
An exhibition at Alcatraz of artwork by the Chinese activist Ai Weiwei is drawing visitors who otherwise might not have toured the island prison, which is a National Park service site in San Francisco Bay.
“Many visitors, especially from the San Francisco Bay Area, tell us that they had never wanted to visit the island before the Ai Weiwei exhibition, because they weren’t drawn to the prison history of the island,” said Howard Levitt of the National Park Service.
The exhibit, @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz,” closes April 26. It includes seven sculptures, sound and mixed-media works installed across four locations on Alcatraz. The show was inspired by the island’s notorious prison.
Details at aiweiweialcatraz.org.