Amazing Art and Car Collection

Yesterday was the last „official“ day of the GoWest Summit. It’s been another day packed with about 20+ appointments, this time we could have passed on about two thirds of them. Lunch in the Convention Center wasn't noteworthy, but to feed a couple of hundreds of participants is not an easy job.

A nice change inbetween appointments was that we were invited to the Topping Off Celebration of the Art Museum’s new wing in the afternoon. That’s an amazing story and never conceivable in Germany: an art collector gave his whole collection of Western Art to the Tacoma Art Museum on condition that a new building - for which he paid a large portion - will host the collection. In a short period of time a fund raising campaign fetched $ 15,5 mio. (!) and now the new building is supposed to open in fall 2014. The most amazing thing is, that the collection belongs to a German couple by name „Haub“. Didn’t do research on them yet, but apparently they are still living in Germany most of the time (besides having a ranch in Wyoming and some place in Tacoma) but apparently didn’t want to give their collection to a german museum. Seems like german buraucracy stroke again so that they decided to give their collection to an american museum …


Appointments ended at 5:30 pm and the 7 pm evening event took place in the LeMay-America's Car Museum - a huge collection of classic and vintage automobiles, trucks, NASCAR vehicles and motorcycles. The museum was spectacular, food and wine not necessarily. Fingerfood, again, which means getting greasy fingers while eating and having to balance a plastic plate and a glass while standing. Different restaurants were serving their signature dishes in miniature portions and by far the best was the smoked salmon, but there were always long lines. One Washington winery was present and their wines were o.k. Back to the hotel at about 11 pm.