Must-See Plunder

It didn't look good when we arrived at the British Museum.  The dense line stretched all around the block. But it was mostly a security delay and soon enough we were enjoying the extraordinary plunder of the British Empire, including this exhausted horse from Athens.

The sculptures in the Parthenon Room decorated a frieze atop the world's most famous Greek temple from 432 BC until Lord Elgin carted them away to London beginning in 1800 for safekeeping.

It certainly is a gorgeous sunlit space protected from the weather.  Look at the floor!

Centaurs have always fascinated me; this one is about to kill a Lapith.

We toured only the highlights.  An Egyptian king looked familiar.  Too bad you had  to pay to see the Rosetta Stone which wasn't the case in 2016.

People last played with the Lewis Chessmen, carved from walrus ivory, sometime during the Middle Ages.  They were discovered in the Outer Hebrides (also known as the Western Isles) in 1831.  We got only as far as the Inner Hebrides on our Scotland trip earlier this year.

I wasn't able to identify this mosaic.  It decorated a stairwell.

Someone "found" this 1783 sculpture of Minerva by Carlo Albacini on a Roman hill.

Thom posed outside the museum in his new Belstaff outfit.

Whose Home?

Afrocentric mosaics by Rico Gaston greet commuters at 167th Street in the Bronx.

This one depicts Gil Scott-Heron.  Other homies include James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and Sonia Sotomayer.

Weird landscape art behind a wrought iron fence caught my eye a block south on the Grand Concourse.

Anachronistic sculpture adorned the front yard too.

Welcome to the Andrew Freedman Home, surely one of New York City's more bizarre public spaces. Freedman, former owner of the New York Giants, built it almost a century ago as a place to retire for wealthy people who had fallen on hard times.

Two of the enormous rooms on the first floor have been turned into local art galleries.

Art work also hangs in the long hallways.

A rowboat washed up on the carpet.

Way beyond the art, a young woman studied.

Lay down your yoga mats here.

The furnishings and fixtures still have an institutional feel.