Day 34 - Austin: Cosmic Coffee, Umlauf Sculpture Garden, Carver Museum

Last night it was balmy, walking along Sixth street. This morning the temperature has dropped. They say tonight it's going to freeze. Figure that!

We went to have lunch at the Cosmic Coffee and Beer Garden off of South Congress Avenue. We were early and it was windy and freezing. No place to eat inside.
Luckily a table got freed up in the patio and then they put on the plastic curtains and turned on the tower heaters.
They serve food from food trucks parked in the beer garden, and coffee is served from ...the coffee shop. The food and the beer were excellent.

Our friends Julian and Anne had recently moved to Austin. We talked a lot about how you can afford a 4 bedroom and 3 1/2 bath home for a third of the money you would need in the Bay Area or even Seattle.
Austin rocks on this point of view. There are job opportunities. Apple and Google have moved in and they are planning to expand. It takes only 10 minutes to go anywhere. Some locals complain about the traffic. I think they mean that there are cars on the road 😏.

After that we went to visit the Umlauf Sculpture Garden near Zilker park... some' to do.
Charles Umlauf was a famous sculptor and a professor at the University of Texas and in 1985 he donated the garden with all his sculptures to the city of Austin.
But what you really want to know is that Farrah Fawcett was one of his students. Yes! That one, from Charlie's Angels. After switching her major from microbiology to art, she became one of Umlauf's most serious students. Their friendship continued through the years. She continued to create artwork and she collected many of the Umlauf sculptures.

We took a walk in the garden.

The weather was not improving so we opted for more indoor activities. We went to visit the George Washington Carver Museum off of Rosewood Avenue.

I didn't know about Juneteenth Independence Day, also known as Freedom Day, which is on the June 19, 1865. It took Texas and the confederate states a bit longer than the rest of the union to announce the abolition of slavery... just a few more months...

In fact, the 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures.

Anyways, this day is celebrated in several cities across the states, and I am planning to attend one this summer... they say the food is superb!

In the museum there were a few rooms dedicated to African American Texans and their contribution to the growth of Texas, from farmers to preachers, from inventors to astronauts. It reminded me of another museum that I had seen in San Francisco about Italian immigrants and their proud and resilient communities. 

There was another room dedicated to a Nigerian American artist, Eto Otitigbe. 

This installation was entitled "Subwaves".

I read more about this artist. He is a multimedia artist and performer. He is interested in the relationships between people and their struggles to survive together and mainly the byproduct of all of this. 

I like his stuff!