It did do several things, however:
a) I believe Trump has peaked and displayed a level of ill humor and sourness that will not advance his cause much beyond where he currently is as the candidate of the angry. (See 1 below.)
b) Fiorino proved, once again, she is articulate and far better than her poll results demonstrate and a solid V.P candidate and maybe the top spot if she can raise the funds.
c) Carson comes away remaining a man of humor, intelligence and decency and an excellent Cabinet choice.
d) Bush came across, to me, as a very impressive person in a physical sense, a thoughtful, quiet type but he did not project enough fire in his belly. Sam Nunn had the same problem but then he never wanted to be president.
e) Rand may not have advanced his cause and possibly lost the dust up with Christie but he has some unique attributes that have appeal.
The rest of the field showed themselves to be talented, experienced and thus, makes it difficult to select a real front runner choice, for me, at this time.
In the final analysis, Republicans have a wealth of talent and strong bench arrayed against Sanders the Socialist and Hillarious the liar. (See 1a below.)
Time will tell whether enough voters can break away from their dependent emotional ties to and goodies dispensed by Democrats. This may be what far too many and America has become but this is not the rugged, risk taking and independent individual and America our founders conceived when they crafted our Constitution.
I am currently reading "Rediscovering America" written by a dear friend, John Agresto, and highly commend it to anyone who has lost sight of what our nation was once all about.
Comments from someone I love:
"I thought it was a wonderful evening. Not a circus but measured responses, great and pointed
questions. Civility. Trump showed himself to be what he was -- a buffoon. On his own he can swing
that act. But amidst serious contenders his antics reflected poorly. I thought Bush was a bit too quiet,
no passion. I think he's solid but a third Bush? I don't know that the country would do it. I liked Kasich
quite a lot and Christie has a bit of the Wild West swagger that is appealing.
I love that Hillary is now running ads to make her homey, invoking her mother and that she is a grandmother now.
What would Hill's mom say to all the subterfuge and law breaking she's been doing????? is that a legacy her mom would want to see?"
===After Schumer counted noses he came to the conclusion the Iran Deal will pass, because enough Democrat Senators will vote to block its rejection, and thus, boldly announced he will vote against it.
What a slicker. In my opinion being Jewish in New York meant a vote for would threaten his prospect of re-election. (See 2 below.)
====
In view of our recent coast to coast drive, which included many museum visits, I thought the enclosed of interest. (See 3 below.)
===
Dick
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1)
Trump: A Mismatch for the GOP
Conservatives are more focused than ever on substance and consistency.
The Donald at his golf club in Rancho Palos Verde, Calif., 2002. PHOTO: DAMIAN DOVARGANES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Of the 10 Republicans in Thursday’s debate, none was harder to explain than Donald Trump. It’s not that he isn’t a serious candidate. It’s that he was on the wrong stage, with the wrong people, at the wrong time.
Republicans have been working for the past decade to reconstruct a movement that collapsed in the mid-2000s as a result of laziness and loss of principle. It has been a wrenching process, full of tea-party uprisings and bitter primaries, uninspired presidential candidacies and blown elections, policy setbacks and government shutdowns. Still, the number of triumphs has been growing. The Republicans’ hold over governorships and takeover of the Senate, their new faces and new ideas, and their brimming presidential field all are signs that the Republican electorate has grown more thoughtful about the political process—and more demanding of smart, principled conservatives.
And then along comes The Donald. In some ways, you can see the appeal. Mr. Trump is good at selling things, and even better at selling himself. He knows what inspires voters, thus his rallying theme, “Make America Great Again.” He knows what frustrates them, thus his focus on immigration, which has become a broad byword for everything voters hate about Washington.
What Mr. Trump lacks is pretty much everything else that conservatives have come to insist on in their candidates—everything that created today’s Scott Walkers and Marco Rubios and Ted Cruzes. Mr. Trump is the anti-new-GOP.
Opinion Journal Video
Wonder Land Columnist Dan Henninger on the GOP frontrunner and what’s at stake in the first Republican presidential debate. Photo credit: Getty Images.
He’s not conservative. Remember all those recent primaries in which Republican voters fired sitting legislators for being too wimpy on taxes or health care or spending? Mr. Trump makes the losers look good. He’s on record in favor of single-payer health care, and on Thursday night praised it again in other countries. He’s said he likes gun control; higher taxes and eminent domain. He has said he’s pro-choice, against a flat tax, and opposed to free trade. He has personally given money to help elect pretty much every politician Republicans view as a threat to the Western world: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer. Imagine the pitchforks in New Hampshire if Chris Christie had this track record.
He’s not principled. Mr. Trump has disavowed most of his liberal positions. But grass-roots conservatives have increasingly lost tolerance for Republicans who switch positions on a whim, or try to have it two ways. Already in this early phase of the presidential race, voters have rapped Mr. Walker for changing views on immigration; Jeb Bush for waffling on Iraq; and Mr. Rubio for altering his position on military spending.
Mr. Trump explained his own entirely new political persona this week and on Thursday by rolling out the classic “I’ve evolved” line, and referencing Ronald Reagan. True, many great conservatives started on the left. Then again, most took their time moving rightward. Mr. Trump has evolved at the speed of lightning. As recently as 2012 he backed the sort of comprehensive immigration reform he now derides and praised Hillary Clinton as “a terrific woman.” Only a few years before that, he talked up the 2008 auto bailouts and hoped an “impressive” Nancy Pelosi would “impeach” George W. Bush.
He’s also not policy knowledgeable. Evolution involves an end point; it’s an intellectual struggle that concludes with considered policy positions. What are Mr. Trump’s? The conservative electorate has put growing value on fresh, substantive ideas and plans for getting them enacted. They appreciated Mr. Walker’s collective-bargaining overhaul,John Kasich’s tax reform, and Mr. Christie’s pension fixes.
Mr. Trump remains a cipher. He has been queried endlessly on how, precisely, he’d make America great again—what exactly is his tax plan, or his education reform, or his health-care fix? Yet he has smoothly dodged specifics, as he did during the debate on everything from health care to the economy. Contrast that with Mr. Rubio’s detailed tax plan, Bobby Jindal’s energy proposals, or Mr. Christie’s entitlement reforms.
Then there is the oddity that so many are buying Mr. Trump’s I’m-a-self-made-man-who-will-change-Washington shtick, when conservatives have come to care so much about genuineness. Mr. Trump has done well in business, and that’s praiseworthy.
Yet he inherited a fortune from his tycoon father, and he built his empire by practicing the sort of corporate elbow-rubbing and lobbying and reliance on government favors that conservatives revile as crony capitalism. On Thursday night, Mr. Trump outright bragged his money put politicians at his beck and call. He’s no Ben Carson, who broke free from inner-city Detroit to become a neurosurgeon. Mr. Trump is an insider, a deal-maker; he was born into it.
None of this is to say that Mr. Trump didn’t have a right to be on stage debating. Just not this particular stage, at this time, in this party. He isn’t the culmination of the new conservative movement; he’s its wrecking ball.
1a)
Clinton’s Email Evasions
The FBI has plenty to investigate if it wants to get serious.
Inspector General Charles McCullough PHOTO: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
The FBI is finally looking into Hillary Clinton’s handling of email as Secretary of State, but her campaign says not to worry because it’s not a “criminal referral” and she followed “appropriate practices.” The relevant question is why isn’t it a criminal probe?
Congress asked Charles McCullough III, Inspector General for the intelligence community, to evaluate whether classified information was transmitted or received by State Department employees over personal email systems. His office sampled 40 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, determined that four contained classified intelligence, and passed that finding to Justice for review. This was merely a first step, and now we know the FBI is investigating the security of Mrs. Clinton’s private server.
The McCullough findings at a minimum rebut Mrs. Clinton’s claim in March that there was “no classified material” in her personal email. Extrapolate the McCullough finding of four of 40 classified emails to the 30,000 emails Mrs. Clinton gave to State, and thousands could contain classified information. State has already redacted and withheld dozens of Mrs. Clinton’s emails from its monthly, court-ordered email releases, having deemed them confidential.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill says none of this matters because all of the “released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted.” Mrs. Clinton adds that this is merely a “typical” fight after the fact about the technical definition of “classified.”
But this skates over that the person in charge of setting classification designations for her department was none other than Mrs. Clinton. As State Department head, she was responsible for setting classification levels (“top secret,” “secret,” “confidential”) and establishing uniform procedures to ensure these designations and protect the information.
In her March press conference, Mrs. Clinton bragged that she was “well aware of the classification requirements,” yet only now is her team saying she couldn’t recognize classified material when she saw it. And Mr. McCullough has made clear that the four emails he identified “contained classified information when they were generated,” remain “classified today,” and “should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.”
The larger point is that Mrs. Clinton had no business using private email for any document that might come close to the gray area of classified or sensitive. Even if Mrs. Clinton was careful not to email classified information, how did she prevent others from sending it to her? Did the entire State Department know she was using a private server? Was there a protocol?
Mrs. Clinton’s insistence that she never emailed classified information over her private server is an admission that her system lacked adequate security. Experts we talk to say it’s a virtual certainty that foreign hackers or intelligence services accessed her private server.
The Clinton campaign says a team of reviewers went through each email to determine what should be given to the State Department. Who were those reviewers, and did they have classified clearance? And how secure is the thumb drive with classified info that the Clinton campaign says is in the possession of Clinton lawyer David Kendall?
The Espionage Act, which is part of the U.S. criminal code, makes it a crime for any government employee, through “gross negligence,” to allow national defense information “to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed.” Mrs. Clinton’s email on a private server was not in its proper place of custody and was at plenty of risk of being lost or stolen. We also know she edited some of the email that went to State, which means pieces of it have been destroyed.
Plenty of government officials have been prosecuted for less. David Petraeus paid a fine and received two years of probation for allowing his mistress access to classified information. John Deutch, former director of the CIA, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and fine after his laptops were found to contain classified materials. Bill Clintonpardoned him on the last day of his Presidency.
Marine Major Jason Brezler, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, accidentally took home a few classified documents on his personal computer and sent one over personal email in response to an urgent inquiry. A Marine Corps board of inquiry recommended he be discharged for mishandling classified information.
Compare this to Mrs. Clinton’s elaborate efforts to keep her official email from public view. She knew the rules, yet she chose to break them for her own political benefit. In the process she put state secrets at risk. This is gross negligence in the pursuit of gross self-interest.
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My Position on the Iran Deal
Every several years or so a legislator is called upon to cast a momentous vote in which the stakes are high and both sides of the issue are vociferous in their views.
Over the years, I have learned that the best way to treat such decisions is to study the issue carefully, hear the full, unfiltered explanation of those for and against, and then, without regard to pressure, politics or party, make a decision solely based on the merits.
I have spent the last three weeks doing just that: carefully studying the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, reading and re-reading the agreement and its annexes, questioning dozens of proponents and opponents, and seeking answers to questions that go beyond the text of the agreement but will have real consequences that must be considered.
Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed. This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval.
While we have come to different conclusions, I give tremendous credit to President Obama for his work on this issue. The President, Secretary Kerry and their team have spent painstaking months and years pushing Iran to come to an agreement. Iran would not have come to the table without the President’s persistent efforts to convince the Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese to join in the sanctions. In addition, it was the President’s far-sighted focus that led our nation to accelerate development of the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP), the best military deterrent and antidote to a nuclear Iran. So whichever side one comes down on in this agreement, all fair-minded Americans should acknowledge the President’s strong achievements in combatting and containing Iran.
In making my decision, I examined this deal in three parts: nuclear restrictions on Iran in the first ten years, nuclear restrictions on Iran after ten years, and non-nuclear components and consequences of a deal. In each case I have asked: are we better off with the agreement or without it?
In the first ten years of the deal, there are serious weaknesses in the agreement. First, inspections are not “anywhere, anytime”; the 24-day delay before we can inspect is troubling. While inspectors would likely be able to detect radioactive isotopes at a site after 24 days, that delay would enable Iran to escape detection of any illicit building and improving of possible military dimensions (PMD) — the tools that go into building a bomb but don’t emit radioactivity.
Furthermore, even when we detect radioactivity at a site where Iran is illicitly advancing its bomb-making capability, the 24-day delay would hinder our ability to determine precisely what was being done at that site.
Even more troubling is the fact that the U.S. cannot demand inspections unilaterally. By requiring the majority of the 8-member Joint Commission, and assuming that China, Russia, and Iran will not cooperate, inspections would require the votes of all three European members of the P5+1 as well as the EU representative. It is reasonable to fear that, once the Europeans become entangled in lucrative economic relations with Iran, they may well be inclined not to rock the boat by voting to allow inspections.
Additionally, the “snapback” provisions in the agreement seem cumbersome and difficult to use. While the U.S. could unilaterally cause snapback of allsanctions, there will be instances where it would be more appropriate to snapback some but not all of the sanctions, because the violation is significant but not severe. A partial snapback of multilateral sanctions could be difficult to obtain, because the U.S. would require the cooperation of other nations. If the U.S. insists on snapback of all the provisions, which it can do unilaterally, and the Europeans, Russians, or Chinese feel that is too severe a punishment, they may not comply.
Those who argue for the agreement say it is better to have an imperfect deal than to have nothing; that without the agreement, there would be no inspections, no snapback. When you consider only this portion of the deal — nuclear restrictions for the first ten years — that line of thinking is plausible, but even for this part of the agreement, the weaknesses mentioned above make this argument less compelling.
Second, we must evaluate how this deal would restrict Iran’s nuclear development after ten years.
Supporters argue that after ten years, a future President would be in no weaker a position than we are today to prevent Iran from racing to the bomb. That argument discounts the current sanctions regime. After fifteen years of relief from sanctions, Iran would be stronger financially and better able to advance a robust nuclear program. Even more importantly, the agreement would allow Iran, after ten to fifteen years, to be a nuclear threshold state with the blessing of the world community. Iran would have a green light to be as close, if not closer to possessing a nuclear weapon than it is today. And the ability to thwart Iran if it is intent on becoming a nuclear power would have less moral and economic force.
If Iran’s true intent is to get a nuclear weapon, under this agreement, it must simply exercise patience. After ten years, it can be very close to achieving that goal, and, unlike its current unsanctioned pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear program will be codified in an agreement signed by the United States and other nations. To me, after ten years, if Iran is the same nation as it is today, we will be worse off with this agreement than without it.
In addition, we must consider the non-nuclear elements of the agreement. This aspect of the deal gives me the most pause. For years, Iran has used military force and terrorism to expand its influence in the Middle East, actively supporting military or terrorist actions in Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza. That is why the U.S. has labeled Iran as one of only three nations in the world who are “state sponsors of terrorism.” Under this agreement, Iran would receive at least $50 billion dollars in the near future and would undoubtedly use some of that money to redouble its efforts to create even more trouble in the Middle East, and, perhaps, beyond.
To reduce the pain of sanctions, the Supreme Leader had to lean left and bend to the moderates in his country. It seems logical that to counterbalance, he will lean right and give the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the hardliners resources so that they can pursue their number one goal: strengthening Iran’s armed forces and pursuing even more harmful military and terrorist actions.
Finally, the hardliners can use the freed-up funds to build an ICBM on their own as soon as sanctions are lifted (and then augment their ICBM capabilities in 8 years after the ban on importing ballistic weaponry is lifted), threatening the United States. Restrictions should have been put in place limiting how Iran could use its new resources.
When it comes to the non-nuclear aspects of the deal, I think there is a strong case that we are better off without an agreement than with one.
Using the proponents’ overall standard — which is not whether the agreement is ideal, but whether we are better with or without it — it seems to me, when it comes to the nuclear aspects of the agreement within ten years, we might be slightly better off with it. However, when it comes to the nuclear aspects after ten years and the non-nuclear aspects, we would be better off without it.
Ultimately, in my view, whether one supports or opposes the resolution of disapproval depends on how one thinks Iran will behave under this agreement.
If one thinks Iran will moderate, that contact with the West and a decrease in economic and political isolation will soften Iran’s hard line positions, one should approve the agreement. After all, a moderate Iran is less likely to exploit holes in the inspection and sanctions regime, is less likely to seek to become a threshold nuclear power after ten years, and is more likely to use its new found resources for domestic growth, not international adventurism.
But if one feels that Iranian leaders will not moderate and their unstated but very real goal is to get relief from the onerous sanctions, while still retaining their nuclear ambitions and their ability to increase belligerent activities in the Middle East and elsewhere, then one should conclude that it would be better not to approve this agreement.
Admittedly, no one can tell with certainty which way Iran will go. It is true that Iran has a large number of people who want their government to decrease its isolation from the world and focus on economic advancement at home. But it is also true that this desire has been evident in Iran for thirty-five years, yet the Iranian leaders have held a tight and undiminished grip on Iran, successfully maintaining their brutal, theocratic dictatorship with little threat. Who’s to say this dictatorship will not prevail for another ten, twenty, or thirty years?
To me, the very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great.
Therefore, I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path of diplomacy. It is because I believe Iran will not change, and under this agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power. Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.
For all of these reasons, I believe the vote to disapprove is the right one.
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3)
Five Summertime Art Road Trips
Follow these five art-filled itineraries for summertime road trips to far-flung museums, installations, galleries and private collections
PHOTO: ASAF HANUKA
Art lovers, start your engines.
For a trove of van Gogh paintings, take U.S. Route 7 to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. For a minigolf course designed by artists: Interstate 94 to theWalker Art Center in Minneapolis. A James Turrell light installation: Interstate 10 to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Vincent van Gogh, ‘The Olive Trees,’ 1889 PHOTO: MOMA/SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY
Collectors, dealers, curators and others are hitting the open road this summer, mapping out vacations that include stops at far-flung museums, installations, artists’ studios and private collections.
“When you plan your route, you’re asking yourself, ‘OK, where is the art going to be?’” said Rona Maynard, a 65-year-old former magazine editor from Toronto who visited 49 U.S. museums in five weeks a couple of years ago, logging 6,500 miles with her husband on a route that took them from Detroit to Los Angeles. “You realize that wonderful art turns up in places that are not obvious.”
As art road-trippers plug their coordinates into the GPS, once-remote destinations are newly popular. So many people are trying to visit The Lightning Field, a work by sculptor Walter De Maria featuring 400 polished stainless-steel poles in the New Mexico desert, that its steward said it has convinced Google to scrub the installation’s location from its maps (an office address shows up instead). Jessica Morgan, director of Dia Art Foundation, which owns the land, said the location is kept private to help protect the artwork and its visitors.
Summer offers a chance to make a deeper connection to the paintings, sculptures and other works that drive the art market, art veterans say—an opportunity to contemplate and experience rather than buy and sell.
“It’s much more authentic than banging through an art fair,” said Los Angeles art dealer Bill Griffin, who last year traveled across Texas from museums in Dallas to the Rothko Chapel in Houston (with its 14 monumental paintings by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko) to a swing through the art mecca in the tumbleweed town of Marfa.
Here, five itineraries:
Northeast
Lynda Benglis, ‘Hills and Clouds,’ 2014 PHOTO: LYNDA BENGLIS/CHEIM & READ, NY
Storm King Art Center (New Windsor, N.Y.)
The sprawling sculpture park now is showing an exhibit of fountains by Lynda Benglis. A popular stop: the artist’s most recent sculpture, “Hills and Clouds,” an abstract glow-in-the-dark piece that evokes radioactive cave stalactites or phosphorescent ocean debris. For extra ambience, Storm King is holding evening walks to the piece during certain full moons; at the last such walk, 120 visitors traipsed about a half mile through a field to reach the artwork. The next moonlit walk is set for Aug. 29. For those who can’t get enough of nighttime art viewing: A towering installation went up this summer around the ruins of Bannerman Castle on an island in the Hudson River between Beacon and Cornwall-on-Hudson in New York. “Constellation,” a series of 17 poles topped with LED lights, glimmers like stars in an unfamiliar sky.
Dia:Beacon (Beacon, N.Y.)
Robert Irwin, ‘Excursus: Homage to the Square,’ Dia:Beacon PHOTO: ROBERT IRWIN/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS)
Visitors to the modern and contemporary art museum in a former Nabisco box-printing factory wend their way through a newly opened 16-chamber light installation by artist Robert Irwin. Such shows are popular among art tourists: Next month, MaryAnne Limbos will include Dia: Beacon on an art tour of New York’s Hudson River Valley with a group from the Art Institute of Chicago. The 82-year-old former fashion executive from Evanston, Ill., who has traveled with the Chicago museum in the past, doesn’t expect much rest on the tour, which includes stops at studios and private collections. “You almost don’t even have time to buy a postcard,” she said.
Olana State Historic Site (Hudson, N.Y.)
Olana Estate PHOTO: UIG/GETTY IMAGES
The 19th-century family home of Hudson River School painter Frederic Church, an early master of what has been dubbed the first truly American style of painting, is teaming up with the Thomas Cole National Historic Site just across the Hudson in Catskill, N.Y., for the exhibit “River Crossings: Contemporary Art Comes Home,” featuring works by artists including Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith. Olana, a 250-acre estate whose home and landscape were designed by Mr. Church, offers limited spaces on artist-led tours of the exhibit every Saturday.
The Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, Mass.)
The museum, which last year unveiled a new exhibition center and revamped its 140 acres of lawns and meadows in the Berkshires, is exhibiting “Van Gogh and Nature,” 49 paintings and drawings by the artist exploring his fascination with all things bucolic and wild. Works include “Olive Trees,” a landscape van Gogh painted while in an asylum in 1889, and “Green Wheat Fields, Auvers,” completed months before his death in 1890. The show is set to break special-exhibit attendance records at the Clark, which calls this the first museum show to focus exclusively on van Gogh’s connection to nature.
Pennsylvania and Ohio
Fallingwater PHOTO: ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES
Fallingwater (Mill Run, Pa.)
Most visitors drive at least four hours to the 1935 Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homeperched over a waterfall on Bear Run in western Pennsylvania. The National Historic Landmark, which often attracts roughly 900 visitors a day in the summer, may turn away tourists who don’t have reservations. Travelers can tack on a seven-mile drive to another landmark, Kentuck Knob, a house designed by Mr. Wright and completed in 1956. This summer, Kentuck Knob is offering $95-a-plate “Appalachian farm to table dinners” in an outdoor pavilion.
Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio)
Winslow Homer, ‘Snap the Whip,’ 1872 PHOTO:BUTLER INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN ART
The museum, one of the first dedicated exclusively to American art when it was founded in 1919, houses a star work: Winslow Homer’s “Snap the Whip,” an 1872 rendering of boys holding hands, tearing out of a schoolhouse as they play a game. The museum’s Beecher Center features nontraditional media and electronic art. Here, wall cutouts reveal holographic portraits of Tony Bennett and Arnold Schwarzenegger by artist Ana Maria Nicholson. Five galleries in a converted church hold the museum’s Americana collection, which includes carousel animals and ship models.
Akron Art Museum (Akron, Ohio)
Barbara Probst, ‘Exposure #106: N.Y.C., Broome & Crosby Streets, 04.17.13, 2:29 p.m.,’ 2013 PHOTO: BARBARA PROBST/AKRON ART MUSEUM
Home to more than 5,000 modern and contemporary artworks, its notable pieces include Chuck Close’s 9-foot-tall portrait, “Linda.” A continuing exhibit, “Proof: Photographs from the Collection,” features Civil War prints by George Barnard alongside an installation by German-born photographer Barbara Probst, who used synchronized cameras to capture 12 perspectives of a moment at a New York City intersection. In a series commissioned by the museum, Lee Friedlander depicts the industrial decline of the Rust Belt in the late 1970s. For an art-inspired scavenger hunt, visitors can hit the streets in search of 30 scale reproductions of paintings from the collection in neighborhoods in and around Akron.
Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio)
Dale Chihuly, ‘Campiello del Remer Chandelier # 2’ PHOTO: RALPH LIEBERMAN/TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART
The Glass City’s museum pays homage to its history with the collection inside the Glass Pavilion. Hundreds of curved glass panels make up the walls of the 74,000-square-foot structure, which houses more than 5,000 works, including several intricately cut punch bowls by the Libbey Glass Company and a Dale Chihuly chandelier. The “Play Time” exhibit has a hand-crocheted, textile sculpture resembling a trapeze net that visitors can climb.
Texas
Cadillac Ranch PHOTO: UIG/GETTY IMAGES
Amarillo
Tours around this north Texas city are anchored by Robert Smithson’s last land-art project, Amarillo Ramp, a massive elevated swirl of red sandstone and white alabaster. The 1973 work was completed by a team that included artist Nancy Holt and sculptor Richard Serra after Mr. Smithson died in a plane crash while surveying the area (the fuselage fell roughly where the ramp now sits). Visits to the installation on private land are arranged through a guide and often are called off during rain, which can wash out the cattle roads leading to the site. Jon Revett, a painting and drawing assistant professor at West Texas A&M University who gives tours of the area, wraps in Cadillac Ranch, a 1970s public art project featuring 10 Cadillacs dug into the ground nose-first, as well as some of the area’s quirky traffic signs (examples: “We Are Cool” and “I Am A Dirty Fighter”) and the building that inspired contemporary artist Ed Ruscha’s 1963 “Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas.”
Marfa
Prada Marfa PHOTO: MCT/GETTY IMAGES
Though many tourists delay their Texas visits until at least September given the scorching summer heat, intrepid art travelers set their sights on this small town regardless. Property purchased by the late artist Donald Judd, who drove a truck full of art here in the early 1970s, features his installations, other works and studios. The art hub includes attractions like “Prada Marfa,” an installation by artistsElmgreen & Dragset that is a sealed mock-up of a Prada store holding actual Prada shoes and bags.
Houston
Dan Flavin, ‘untitled,’ 1996 PHOTO: HICKEY-ROBERTSON/THE MENIL COLLECTION
Another long drive or short flight brings art pilgrims to the Menil Collection, featuring the only free-standing gallery devoted to American painter and sculptor Cy Twombly and a rare permanent light installation by Dan Flavin, who finalized the design for the piece two days before his death in 1996. The city also is hometo three James Turrell light installations: a tunnel at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a pavilion at Rice University and a work inside a Quaker meetinghouse.
Tip of the Cowboy Hat to Dallas/Fort Worth
Dallas art collector Howard Rachofsky said if Houston is good for two full days of art touring, then his neck of the woods merits three. “The Dallas-Fort Worth area probably has a little more meat to it,” said the former hedge-fund manager. Mr. Rachofsky cited not just the museums but the private collections, which can be accessed with the right connections.
The West: Land Art
Spiral Jetty (Great Salt Lake, Utah)
Robert Smithson’s 1,500-foot-long coil stretching into the lake at Rozel Point is intentionally democratic: It’s on Google maps and anyone can drive there, no reservations required and no rules posted. Some who have walked atop this 1970 work call it a profound experience. “It’s almost like an umbilical cord to the center of the earth,” said Elyse Goldberg, who handles Mr. Smithson’s work for the James Cohan Gallery in New York. Visiting can be a challenge: On one trip, a car in Ms. Goldberg’s traveling party sank into an oil seep near the jetty, forcing everyone to jam into another vehicle.
Sun Tunnels (Lucin, Utah)
A three-hour drive from Spiral Jetty over the northern edge of the Great Salt Lake brings visitors to another installation—the late artist Nancy Holt’s series of four above-ground concrete tunnels framing the land and sky in the Great Basin Desert. Ms. Holt, who was married to Mr. Smithson, completed the work in 1976. Since then, visitors have climbed in the cylinders, slept near them and maybe even shot guns through them (the artist believed
bullets caused mysterious dark marks
inside the work).
bullets caused mysterious dark marks
inside the work).
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Home and Studio (Abiquiu, N.M.)
Georgia O'Keeffe, ‘Ram's Head, Blue Morning Glory,’ 1938 PHOTO: GEORGIA O
The destination offers an “aha moment” for people who think they understand the artist, putting visitors directly into the landscapesshe painted and illustrating how close the art was to the real thing, said Cody Hartley,director of curatorial affairs for the Santa Fe-based Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which operates the site 50 miles north of the city. Much has changed since Ms. O’Keeffe’s time: The artist made her first summer trip to New Mexico in the Dustbowl Era as cattle herds were dying. Today, visitors don’t have to step over cow skulls.
The Lightning Field (Quemado, N.M.)
Reservations are required for trips to this installation, and the May-October season books solid within days. The artist, Walter De Maria, was specific about how he wanted people to experience his work, a grid of poles that attract lightning in the high desert, particularly in the summer. Someone from the site drives a group of six visitors to the 1977 work. They stay in a cabin overnight. “Those kinds of artworks, you’re meant to spend some time with them,” said Kara Vander Weg, a director of New York’s Gagosian Gallery who has visited twice. “It’s not something you look at from your car window.”
California
Michael Heizer, ‘Levitated Mass,’ 2012 PHOTO: MICHAEL HEIZER/LACMA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles)
For land art without the drive, try Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass,” a 340-ton boulder suspended over a concrete slot on the museum’s campus. The large-scale sculpture has been grabbing attention since 2012, when its rock was transported over roughly 11 nights from California’s Jurupa Valley to Los Angeles. Mr. Heizer is a land artist, known for his 1969 piece “Double Negative,” two giant rectangular slices into the cliffs of a mesa near Overton, Nev. His land sculpture, “City,” a project about 150 miles north of Las Vegas, is one of the largest artworks ever attempted and a source of fascination for art lovers (though currently incomplete and closed to visitors). President Obama recently designated the Basin and Range, an area that includes “City,” as a national monument.
The Broad (Los Angeles)
The Broad PHOTO: IWAN BAAN/DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENF/THE BROAD
The long-awaited contemporary art museumshowcasing billionaire couple Eli and Edythe Broad’s 2,000-piece collection in the city’s downtown opens on Sept. 20. The museum features works by artists including Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Curiosity about this new art venue abounds: 3,500 people gathered for a public preview at the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed museum earlier this year, even though there was no art on the walls.
Lotusland (Montecito)
Lotus at Lotuslandand PHOTO: LOTUSLAND
Head about two hours north on US-101 to the estate of Madame Ganna Walska, a Polish opera singer and garden lover. The 20 gardens include topiaries and 19th-century carved statues. Fun fact: the Cycad Garden contains more than 900 specimens of ancient palm-like plants, some species dating to the time of the dinosaurs. A garden spokesman said the venue uses water from a well on its grounds and remains within its prescribed allotment of municipal water during California’s drought. Reservations required.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara)
A detail of ‘Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932,’ by David Alfaro Siqueiros PHOTO: SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF ART
Highlights include a mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros, “Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932,” painted at a filmmaker’s home and later moved to the museum. While living in Los Angeles as a political refugee, the Mexican artist created what would become his only surviving intact mural in the U.S.—a politically charged mix of portraits and tableaux including peasant women, slain workers and a Mexican revolutionary general. The artist was deported to Argentina shortly after the mural’s completion.
—Mark Armao contributed to this article
Write to Ellen Gamerman atellen.gamerman@wsj.com
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