I’m one bird-feathered fascinator and a barely attractive missing fiancé away from being Carrie Bradshaw!

Something cool we stumbled on at the New York Public Library!

Our state capitol is capitoler than your state capitol

Our gold-leafed dome shimmers on the hill:

 The staircase up to the breathtaking rotunda:

Toldja it was breathtaking:

Boobies:

A vestibule off the first floor:

A gorgeous bas-relief tribute to women crowned by an unmistakably Deco sunburst:

Another vestibule has a creepy display of dolls fetishizing the inauguration gowns of our First Ladies:

The stairs to the second floor of the rotunda:

Corn art!

The I above the House chamber windows stands for I LOVE THIS BUILDING: 

But gross. Just fucking gross. Just because an impotent man-boy climbs on his Big Wheel and hurls his feces at the adults to play president doesn’t mean we have to sully our Senate chamber walls with his festering rictus:

Patterns and textures on the second floor:

The steps to the dome, which I unfortunately didn't get to climb:

The freaking STUNNING second-floor library, ladies and gentlemen:

It has lots of books:

And a dumb waiter. For smart people. They’re smart because they read books. And they figured out a way to avoid carrying them up the steps:

And an intricate iron staircase the is the envy of the entire Industrial Revolution:

More intricate wrought iron:

And a beautifully stenciled ceiling medallion:

 A little sorbet to cleanse the palate:

Monuments on the nearby grounds:

Iowa’s memorial to the drooling buffalo that used to wander our land, moistening our soil.

Walking away: 

 Goodbye for now, noble capitol:

Putting the meh in exhibmeht

There’s a tidy little Edward Hopper exhibit at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art featuring pieces on loan from the Whitney Museum in New York in exchange for the Grant Wood pieces lent from the CRMA for the Whitney’s current Grant Wood exhibit. 

The Hopper exhibit here is perfectly OK, but I much prefer the extant architecture from the Carnegie Library that was repurposed into the CRMA with its gloriously geometric Postmodern addition in the 1980s: