St.Louis: Not just corn and soybean fields

Last week I flew to St. Louis for my former roommate's wedding. I had not been to St. Louis since I was about 15 and I have a tendency to be somewhat... dismissive... toward any state considered Midwestern. I mean, flat fields of corn and soybeans? Yawn. So, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that St. Louis is a really fun city (and has hills!)

I assume this is the dude St. Louis was named after (King Louis IX)

They have an expansive park that houses the zoo and several museums (all for free). I decided to visit the Art Museum because it was hot outside and my grandparents conditioned me to visit art museums as often as possible. The museum itself and its surrounding area were beautiful and the permanent collection was impressive (Pollock, Matisse, etc.) 

They had an extensive "Decorative Arts and Design" collection (basically furniture and dishes), which I enjoyed due to my obsession with early American furniture. I mean, just look at that amazing couch. My favorite room was the Charleston room, which was a recreation of a room from a South Carolina plantation (even St.Louis knows Southern homes are where it's at). The best parts about the room were the tiny piano-like instrument and the fact that I set off the security alarm. No one came to investigate - in fact I didn't see a single guard in the entire collection, leading me to conclude that the St.Louis art museum would be an excellent place to steal art (or 18th century furniture). 

In addition to the permanent collection, there were a few visiting collections. The Atlanta art museum has a rather poor permanent collection and wonderful visiting exhibits. I'd say the St. Louis museum was pretty much the opposite. Also, it was rather confusing and difficult to find the visiting exhibits because of the addition of a wing that was only accessible through one door at the end of a long gallery. I finally found the visiting exhibition that was the most heavily advertised called "Yoko Ono: Wish Tree". A similar exhibition was done at MOMA a while ago I think. It is basically 3 Japanese maples and a bunch of blank tags for people to write their wishes on. Most of the wishes were about happiness for oneself or someone else. A surprising amount seemed to be from mothers wishing their child would get married or have a child (thus an implicit assumption these events will lead to happiness.)  I took a few pictures of my favorite ones:

The one about the monkey is my favorite. In my mind, Colten is the author's little brother

So there we have it. The Midwest contains beautiful buildings AND art. Who knew? 

Next time on my tales of St.Louis: Nauvoo, the Arch, and Catholicism