This is inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Many years ago, museums were very ordinary buildings, seen merely as containers for art. Don't want to detract from the art, after all. Just take a look at the Met in NYC or the Louvre in Paris. Talk about building palaces for art. The Louvre actually was a palace before it was a museum, which sort of gave it a head start.

But then things started to change. The MOMA in NYC had sort of a Bauhaus look about it. Then came the Guggenheim, Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece. And now, glitzy new museums are springing up all around the world. (Insert list of glitzy new museums here).

SFMOMA has some fascinating spaces inside that play with the incoming daylight. The image here is but one example. The bad news is, at least at the time of our visit, the museum was more interesting than the art. I'm trying to remember something that we saw there. Usually, I can remember at least one thing from most museums I've been to, but in this case I draw a complete blank. The only thing I remember is some high-tech stuff that you looked at through a computer interface. (Note to SFMOMA people: Would you be interested in some works from the Techno-Impressionist Museum to spice things up? We could arrange a loan. Take a look at our "San Francisco" show on the main museum page.)

Our trip to the bay area was in the spring of 2001. There were already rolling blackouts in California, a precursor to the crimes of Enron and their enablers in the White House. But nobody that we met in California was fooled by this chicanery. They knew what was up.