L’Homme Qui Marche

Alberto Giacometti Walking Man II (L’Homme qui marche II) at the Johnson Museum in Ithaca New York
Alberto Giacometti Walking Man II (L’Homme qui marche II) at the Johnson Museum in Ithaca New York

Whenever I catch a glimpse of myself while walking by a building with reflective glass I’m always taken aback by how bent over I look. And we were really slumped over yesterday as we climbed the big hill up to the Cornell campus in Ithaca.

The guard at the Johnson Museum yesterday was downright chatty. We were admiring Giacometti’s “Walking Man II (L’Homme qui marche II)” when he offered that this piece was the most expensive one in the collection, worth over a hundred million in fact. I said, “You better make sure no one walks into it and he said “Someone already did.” “A women backed into it while she was taking a photo.” He showed us a slight crack in one of the legs setting the alarm off as he pointed to it. I had just seen a sign that said “No Photos” so I asked if it was ok to take photos and said it was ok to photograph the permanent collection but not the work on loan or the work that is usually in storage but temporarily on display. I really wanted a photo of the Otto Dix etching called “Self Portrait with Cigarette” (also in MoMA collection) but that was off limits so I took one of Walking Man and got the Otto Dix print in the background.

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