last year, art ranch. this year, art cave.

Last year we were lucky enough to visit an art ranch.  This year, an art cave. 

Last weekend I took a trip with a group from the Berkeley Art Museum to visit "Stonescape," which is the Napa farm of Norman and Norah Stone, who have a completely off the hook contemporary art collection.  (A few years ago we got to tour their house, and their entire fourth floor is full of Matthew Barney stuff.)

The place in Napa features an "Art Cave" that they bored into the side of the hill on their property.  It has 26 foot ceilings.  The cave.  And this great Cady Noland piece outside the cave.  Here are some pics.

That multi-paneled Baldessari is a Big Deal, it's one of the ones from the first series that he started after he destroyed all the work he had created up to that point. Oh, and they have this James Turrell sky piece that is part of their pool that we weren't allowed to take pictures of because Turrell had it in his contract that only his photographers could take pictures. 

The whole thing was profiled in the Sunday Times magazine a while back; their photos are much better than mine.  But I love this one of Norman Stone (who leads all the tours of the place and talks at length about the art, and how they bought it, etc., he's a great story teller) holding court in front of the group. 

He's holding his dog in his arms, because he's worried that if he let the dog loose in the cave it'd potentially knock over the 3000 lb free-standing Richard Serra sculpture and kill someone.