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Sunday, October 13, 2013 • Page B4 This Oct. 9 photo shows the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City. The 17-acre gardens have landscaping surrounded by a small lake and an outdoor amphitheater. Trees, shrubbery and other landscaped areas surround a small lake. A children’s garden, splash fountains, offleash dog park and paths for running and walking offer visitors a variety of activities. In the summer, free concerts, movies and children’s events are held throughout the gardens. AP photos
Oklahoma City: Native America, art and more OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Is Oklahoma part of the Midwest, Southwest or southern United States? Ask three different people residing in the Sooner State and you’ll get three different answers. It’s a question with no solid answer, and so Oklahoma has taken a little bit of culture from each and made it its own. It’s where people say y’all and wave as they pass by in a driving car. It’s where you’ll still hear references to cowboys and Indians, and where the state meal is made up of chicken-fried steak, fried okra and squash. Nowhere is the melding of cultures more noticeable than in Oklahoma City, the state’s capital and largest city. Home to nearly 600,000 residents, Oklahoma City is becoming a booming urban area, with a popular major basketball team, The Thunder; a 50-story skyscraper (the Devon Energy Center), and a host of options for dining, museums and recreation. Here are five free things to see and do while in Oklahoma City. RED EARTH MUSEUM Oklahoma is home to 39 Native American tribes. The tribes come from all over the country, having been forced to relocate here in the 19th century to what was known as Indian Territory. They still have many different cultures, languages and beliefs. Visiting each of the tribal headquarters within the state makes for a daunting task, but their influence is felt throughout Oklahoma
This Oct. 9 photo shows shops in the colorful Paseo Arts District are pictured in Oklahoma City. The two-block art district is lined with stucco buildings showcasing their Spanish influence.
City, including at the Red Earth Museum, a small nonprofit gallery in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City. The Red Earth Museum displays more than 1,400 Native American items, which includes fine art, pottery, basketry and beadwork. More than 1,000 American Indian artists and dancers from across North America turn out each year for the annual Red Earth Festival, next scheduled for June 5-7, 2014; http://www.redearth.org . PASEO ARTS DISTRICT Developed in the late 1920s, the two-block Paseo Arts District is lined with stucco
buildings showcasing their Spanish influence. More than 20 art galleries, a handful of restaurants and a few boutiques and gift shops line the street, which has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Paseo celebrates a First Friday gallery walk each month in which visitors can see new work and enjoy live music and wine; http://www. thepaseo.com . BRICKTOWN Stroll along the brick streets of this major entertainment hotspot converted from a warehouse district. While patronizing the businesses in Bricktown will set you back a bit in the
wallet — think upscale restaurants and nightclubs — going just for the people-watching and photo ops on a Friday or Saturday night is worth the trip. In Bricktown, men wearing boots and cowboy hats stroll alongside 20-somethings out for a night on the town. Watch visitors take a water taxi down on the Bricktown Canal or a horse carriage carry passengers past the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, where the minor league Oklahoma City RedHawks baseball team plays; http://www.welcometobricktown.com . MYRIAD BOTANICAL GARDENS
The 17-acre (7-hectare) Myriad Botanical Gardens offer a bit of reprieve from the hustle and bustle of urban life in downtown Oklahoma City. Trees, shrubbery and other landscaped areas surround a small lake. A children’s garden, splash fountains, off-leash dog park and paths for running and walking offer visitors a variety of activities. In the summer, free concerts, movies and children’s events are held throughout the gardens; http://www. myriadgardens.org . THE OKLAHOMA CITY NATIONAL MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM Even people who don’t know much about Oklahoma City will likely recall the Oklahoma City bombing. The memorial is where visitors can pay tribute to the people who were killed and those who survived the bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. While the Memorial Museum has an admission fee, the outdoor memorial, full of symbolism, is free and open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Monuments at each end of the memorial note 9:01 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., framing the destruction that took place at exactly 9:02 a.m. Once inside the grounds, visitors can walk along a reflecting pool. Nearby, 168 chairs represent the number of lives lost, with 19 of the chairs smaller, representing the children who perished in the bombing; http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org. (The federal shutdown has not affected this site.)
Detroit art museum hosts show devoted to animation DETROIT (AP) — The 128-year-old Detroit Institute of Arts has gained a reputation as a home for some of the world’s most hallowed masterpieces: Paintings by Van Gogh and Picasso, the Diego Rivera industry murals. Things will look a bit different, though, over the next few months. Vincent, Pablo and Diego will have company in the form of Mickey, Bart and Bugs. “Watch Me Move: The Animation Show,” which organizers call the “most extensive animation show ever mounted,” has both iconic clips — featuring the aforementioned Mouse, Simpson and Bunny — as well as lesser-known works that span the past 100plus years. The show brings together industry pioneers, independent filmmakers and contemporary artists, including William Kentridge and
Nathalie Djurberg, alongside commercial studios such as Walt Disney , Aardman and Pixar. The exhibit takes its name from American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay’s century-old short film “Little Nemo,” which displays an onscreen message inviting viewers to “Watch Me Move.” Visitors can peruse more than 100 animated film segments — nearly 12 hours’ worth of footage. Time-lapse, stop-motion, hand-drawn and computer-generated animation. It’s all there in a six-section configuration designed to attract art lovers and pop-culture fanboys alike. “Animation is art and is just as worthy as our Van Goghs or our (Pieter) Bruegels to hang inside a museum,” said Jane Dini, one of the show’s curators. “Hang” is the operative word.
Plush couches and other seating areas are placed throughout the show, along with headphones and built-in audio sources. It’s designed to allow visitors to take a load off and absorb the animated content at their own pace. “One of the things we tried to think about was how somebody could easily get through the exhibition in a half an hour, 40 minutes and feel that they had been immersed in the history of animation,” Dini said. “And then for those real connoisseurs of animation, that they could sit here and really” take it in. For that latter group, the DIA is offering a $75 pass that allows for unlimited visits to the exhibit and to the related movies and lectures. One lecture will be delivered by Leslie Iwerks, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker whose grandfather, Ub Iwerks,
was a pioneering Disney animator. A clip from Ub Iwerks’ “Silly Symphonies” is shown not far from “Little Nemo” in the show’s “Beginnings” section, which kicks off the show and is devoted to the emergence of the animated image. Dini’s brother, Paul, a longtime animation writer, also will give a talk. “My brother used to say, if he really wanted to get my goat, that more people knew around the world who Batman was than the ‘Mona Lisa,’” Jane Dini said. The exhibition presents more than a lengthy succession of moving images. Visitors are encouraged to try an interactive video game that begins its journey in London’s Underground. The show concludes on a futuristic high note — the projection mapping room. Projection mapping uses soft-
ware to manipulate projected images and help them to fit on irregularly shaped surfaces. In the exhibition’s projection mapping room, light splashes across jagged-edge formations that at one point give the appearance that spiders are crawling all around. “The thing that we wanted to do with the show that we thought was really important was to have a unifying introductory experience and a unifying conclusion experience,” said Holly Harmon, an interpretive specialist at the DIA. “This is where the technology is now. When you walk into this room, you really don’t know how it’s done.” “Watch Me Move,” which initially was shown at the Barbican Centre in London, runs in Detroit through Jan. 5, before heading to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.