Sunday, March 20, 2016

At breakfast this morning, we read in the paper that Kathmandu is the third most polluted city in the world. My brother-in-law heard the news and mentioned that I do pick the strangest places to vacation.

After breakfast, we went to the museum, which was preparing for a visit by Prince Harry . There was a swat team inside the Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Center (KCAC) and the square was empty of all pedestrians. We had no problems, however, getting the new musicians who were going to record into the museum. We had commissioned two traditional musicians  to write and perform a song about the Bagmati River to include in the project’s documentary. When they heard the playback on the recorder, they smiled and excitedly shared the headphones. They had never heard their voices recorded. They asked if they could play another song, and we have scheduled to record their entire group on Wednesday. We will be giving them digital files. Jason will  design the CD cover, and they will have something that they can use to archive and promote their traditional music in the area.

After the recording session, we went across Kathmandu to Guheswori to photograph the middle school and high school art students depicting their dreams for the Bagmati River. We hope to document a cross-section of artists as they reflect Nepali culture and their depiction of the environment.

After meeting the judges and photographing the work, we headed back to the KCAC to meet with Sangeeta Thapa, the director of the Siddhartha Art Gallery where we will be presenting the project in November. We discussed the exhibition and then headed back across the city to her gallery. We looked at the three floors and started creating a preliminary plan for the exhibition. We also discussed how to ship the works back to the United States after the exhibition came down, and discussed which works by local artists to include in the show. The Burchfield Penny Art Center is interested in touring the exhibition. After our meeting Jason and I walked around the Baber Mahal Revisited before we went back close to Patan and stopped at a grocery store to pick up some cough drops and honey to alleviate my cough, which I have a had since I arrived.

We ended the evening at Thai Ghar, which has become one of our favorite local restaurants.