BRANCUSI 'MUSE' REPLICA

The Old Girl has a nice replica sculpture of Brancusi's Muse. It sits nicely on an old kauri sideboard in our main living room. We bought this from the Guggenheim museum in New York some years ago. It was a bit of a fankle carrying it home with us. The museum staff packaged it up nicely and safely but it got roughly unwrapped by a moronic US customs official at the airport going from NYC to LA. See excerpt here from a blog post I wrote in November 2010:

"New York (Kennedy) in 2007 we were on our way to LA to connect to NZ and I was stopped at the barrier as I had a large box. It was a Brancusi sculpture copy of the Muse that The Old Girl had bought at the Guggenheim. When I showed it to the guard he did a double take as the material used is a bit like solid plasticine. He probably thought it was semtex or something. As the fool was fumbling and having trouble with opening the box properly I moved up to him and started to do it for him. I got the old "Step aside Sir" routine with the hand on the gun. These bozos must watch too many cop shows on TV. He called up someone else who came with a magic wand for detecting explosives and ran it over the statue, the box and me.

When we arrived in Auckland later I declared it to the Customs Officer and asked if she wanted to check it for explosives. She just smiled and waved me through."

I seem to have problems with officious Customs officials and indeed anyone who delight in abusing their authority.

Never mind, the statue came home with us safely and looks really good.

To my eye it looks better than the original. See here:

'MUSE' BY BRANCUSI