Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Georgian Museum of Fine Arts

Anyone who is reading this blog probably knows by now that I'm living in the country of Georgia. I have some ideas for longer posts, but right now I'm busy with work and learning a rather difficult new language, so I want to get things started by mentioning that I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi today, and viewed their wonderful treasury, which is mostly Christian iconography. They wouldn't let me take pictures, so I don't have any to post, but I did get to see the Khakhuli triptych, which was pretty amazing.

There is other stuff in the museum that I think I might be able to take photos of, but my Russian is bad enough that the lady at the front desk was getting frustrated by the time I managed to buy my tour ticket, so I didn't want to push it by asking more questions. My guidebook says the treasury is the highlight of the museum, so I was happy to have seen that. They let me take the tour twice, in Russian and English, which was very nice of them--the guide was more comfortable in Russian, so although I didn't understand very much beyond what was depicted and the age of each piece, I think I probably got more information from the Russian tour because the guide pointed out which pieces were exceptional, even if I didn't always understand exactly why they were special.