All Poway, California is buzzing with excitement. In just three month’s the town’s new in its tiara, the $188.2 million CowboyMetrics Museum will open. No one is prouder than museum curator, “Tex” Roland.
“I’m just fit to bust,” said the beaming Tex. “For decades now, folks just plain associated cowpokes with roping, herding, and advanced statistical skills.” Tex stops to spit expertly on a fire ant. “That ain’t true no more. We have our sensitive, avant-garde side, too.”
Indeed. Yesterday, Tex, the famed rodeo king and speedy inverter of matrices, favored me with a private tour of his cutting edge museum. We started with “Grub,” the museum’s restaurant and homage to cattle drive food. The eatery’s jumbo Gulf shrimp cocktails and sumptuous Swedish meatball bar, presided over by internationally acclaimed chef Pierre “Windy” LeBouef are to die for. When questioned, Tex assured me that cattle-drive food was much more international and gourmet than portrayed in Western movies and dime novels.
On to the museum’s breath-taking canvasses. I gazed intently at two giant green squares, one atop the other, on a bold in-your-face white canvas.
“Tex, that looks like a double-green square from CandylandTM, you know that game we played as kids.”
“Sure is,” said the worthy curator. “Candyland is plum near the alpha and omega of modern art. Milton BradleyTM might have made that game to entertain the youngin’s of this great land, but they also said the final word in modern art. There ain’t been no more artists of any note since Candyland came on the scene.”
“What about Jackson Pollock?” I said.
“Pre Candyland,” said Tex.
You know, he was right. I walked subdued down the long hallways overhung with massive Bohemian chandeliers, on floors made with the finest Tuscan marble. On the walls, hung huge paintings of all the Candyland playing cards done up in fine style on vibrant white canvases from “Bronco” Henri of Paris. I saw red squares, blue ones, double greens, and there, there, in a room all by itself, Queen Frostine on a forty-five foot canvas.
Humanity has truly reached the pinnacle of artistic brilliance, but I don’t know whether to swell with pride or cry.
– Paul De Lancey, art critic
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