Though we went to Arizona for my brother’s wedding, we were determined to get to the Phoenix Art Museum to see the Ansel Adams exhibit. So Friday morning, after a nice breakfast at The Good Egg, our new home away from home, we headed for downtown. Not having looked to see what time they opened, we were early, so we had time to check out the landscaping. I am inordinately fond of palm trees. They don’t grow here in Upstate NY, since they don’t like snow and cold and ice and temperatures that go below zero. Actually a lot of people who live right here aren’t that crazy about all of that either, but people are more adaptable than trees. Anyway, someone needs to breed a zone 5 palm tree.
You just don’t see this out here in the country.
They have a nice fountain out front. 
I took about 50 photos of the water drops falling – they reminded me of home, where we have drops of water falling a lot. I will spare you the other 49 photos though.
Finally, we were allowed inside, only to be met with the information that since the museum doesn’t own the Ansel Adams exhibit, they can’t allow any photos to be taken of it. Is that a cruel irony or what? I have no doubt that I could have taken some sneak photos, but I honored the rule and just enjoyed myself. And this exhibit is quite wonderful – not just prints of some great photographs, but numerous videos of Mr Adams teaching classes, explaining how he set up a particular photo, and just generally talking about taking pictures. I was able to take a photo of this lovely sign, which at least proves that we were there.
You could easily spend days in this place – it is enormous, and just chock full of awesome stuff. We have our priorities however, and had appointments for pedicures, so we could only spend a couple hours there. We did visit a few other areas, including an atrium outdoors where we found this gentleman.
They wouldn’t let him take any photos of the Ansel Adams exhibit either.
I ran far, far away from palm trees. Yucky. And I’m so glad you got to the Ansel Adams exhibit!
That kind of looks like George W.!
I’m curious, D…how hot was it when you were there? Did you get to experience the very warm, dry air we normally have in this area? Arizona is a beautiful state. I love all the red rocks.
Janis – it got up into the high 90s one day, but for the most part it was in the lower 90s. Larry thought it was too hot, but it didn’t bother me for the most part. You could not pay me to spend the summer months in AZ, but it was a nice change from our weather.