Adventures in fine art.
Dec. 14th, 2006 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaYesterday, it took an hour and a half to get Alex down for her nap. She slept for just an hour and fifteen minutes, waking up still exhausted and in an absolutely foul mood - which I shared.
As I'm sure other parents can testify, when you and your child are both tired, grumpy, and short-fused, only one thing helps: getting out of the house. I packed her into the stroller (against her protests), threw some emergency supplies into the seat pocket, and bumped her down the steps. Then I thought about where to go. She'd already been to the library twice since Sunday. It had rained earlier, so it was too wet for the playground. It was already past four o'clock, so we couldn't go anywhere too far afield, like the children's museum or the harbor. Then I thought of the Walters Art Museum, down the street. They've recently dropped their admissions charges, and I hoped that something completely different from our usual rounds would be good for both of us. So off we went.
The Walters grew from a 19th-century private collection; their exhibits begin with antiquity and end in the 19th century. I thought the Egyptian art might be a good bet for us, but then noticed directions to the sculpture court and changed my mind. It was a good choice: a massive, two-story, light-filled central space lined around the edges with statues in the classical style. I set Alex free from the stroller and showed her the nearest one, and that was all I needed to do. She noticed another one across the room, which we went to investigate, and then pointed out "another big one," and then we went into some of the side galleries and looked for additional sculptures in there. Mostly she seemed interested in scanning the gallery cases for sculptures of people that were similar to the ones we saw first. I pointed out a few details I thought she would be interested in, like the giant bird in a statue of Ganymede, and other times she pointed out a detail of a figure to me. ("Combing hair.") We branched out from sculpted figures to look at some "pretty cups" (elaborately jeweled goblets, of course) and some animal figurines. She pronounced that a gorgeous pair of gleaming military eagles, sculpted in some silvery metal, were "chickens." I thought she might enjoy the suits of armor, but she seemed to find them a bit unnerving - she looked at them, and pointed out "another one" a couple of times, but she insisted that I carry her in that room. Then we really hit pay dirt: the "Chamber of Wonders", a representation of one of the private museums nobles sometimes created in the 16th and 17th centuries. As in the original Chambers of Wonders, art, artifacts, and natural history curiosities were all promiscuously jumbled together. There were animal heads, skins, and skulls mounted on the walls, display cases full of pretty things and curiosities, a globe to spin (a reproduction, prominently labeled "may be touched"), cases of butterflies and weird bugs mounted on a table which had benches to stand on, an array of seashells and fossils, and - best of all - lightweight plastic magnifying glasses for getting a close-up view of things. It was toddler paradise. We stayed there until the museum closed. By the time we left, we both felt great - our bad moods had completely vanished.
I didn't find out until today, writing up this post, that there's also a Family Art Center in the basement that has games, toys, and craft materials kids can play with freely. In a way, I'm kind of glad I didn't know. It meant that I took Alex through the galleries instead of straight to the children's section, and that meant discovering that, even at 20 months old, she has the capacity to connect with and enjoy art. I don't know what kind of sense she was able to make of what she saw, or even if she was always able to tell what the statues were supposed to depict. It did seem, though, that she was able to notice basic similarities between different artworks, and between artworks and things she's seen before. She was calm (especially compared to her earlier crankiness), but also alight with interest. Her behavior showed that she responded to the beauty around her, even if she lacked the cognitive and linguistic ability to express much of her response.
Her response was especially interesting to me in light of what's often seen as the self-evident common sense that children should be kept out of adult spaces, because they're not old enough to appreciate them and will only cause disruptions. Surely, if anything short of a porn theater qualifies as an "adult space," you'd think it would be a gallery of classical European art. And yet, there's no way I could say that Alex didn't appreciate it in her own way. I'm sure that other toddlers would too, if allowed to wander at the pace of their own interests rather than being dragged behind their parents.
As I'm sure other parents can testify, when you and your child are both tired, grumpy, and short-fused, only one thing helps: getting out of the house. I packed her into the stroller (against her protests), threw some emergency supplies into the seat pocket, and bumped her down the steps. Then I thought about where to go. She'd already been to the library twice since Sunday. It had rained earlier, so it was too wet for the playground. It was already past four o'clock, so we couldn't go anywhere too far afield, like the children's museum or the harbor. Then I thought of the Walters Art Museum, down the street. They've recently dropped their admissions charges, and I hoped that something completely different from our usual rounds would be good for both of us. So off we went.
The Walters grew from a 19th-century private collection; their exhibits begin with antiquity and end in the 19th century. I thought the Egyptian art might be a good bet for us, but then noticed directions to the sculpture court and changed my mind. It was a good choice: a massive, two-story, light-filled central space lined around the edges with statues in the classical style. I set Alex free from the stroller and showed her the nearest one, and that was all I needed to do. She noticed another one across the room, which we went to investigate, and then pointed out "another big one," and then we went into some of the side galleries and looked for additional sculptures in there. Mostly she seemed interested in scanning the gallery cases for sculptures of people that were similar to the ones we saw first. I pointed out a few details I thought she would be interested in, like the giant bird in a statue of Ganymede, and other times she pointed out a detail of a figure to me. ("Combing hair.") We branched out from sculpted figures to look at some "pretty cups" (elaborately jeweled goblets, of course) and some animal figurines. She pronounced that a gorgeous pair of gleaming military eagles, sculpted in some silvery metal, were "chickens." I thought she might enjoy the suits of armor, but she seemed to find them a bit unnerving - she looked at them, and pointed out "another one" a couple of times, but she insisted that I carry her in that room. Then we really hit pay dirt: the "Chamber of Wonders", a representation of one of the private museums nobles sometimes created in the 16th and 17th centuries. As in the original Chambers of Wonders, art, artifacts, and natural history curiosities were all promiscuously jumbled together. There were animal heads, skins, and skulls mounted on the walls, display cases full of pretty things and curiosities, a globe to spin (a reproduction, prominently labeled "may be touched"), cases of butterflies and weird bugs mounted on a table which had benches to stand on, an array of seashells and fossils, and - best of all - lightweight plastic magnifying glasses for getting a close-up view of things. It was toddler paradise. We stayed there until the museum closed. By the time we left, we both felt great - our bad moods had completely vanished.
I didn't find out until today, writing up this post, that there's also a Family Art Center in the basement that has games, toys, and craft materials kids can play with freely. In a way, I'm kind of glad I didn't know. It meant that I took Alex through the galleries instead of straight to the children's section, and that meant discovering that, even at 20 months old, she has the capacity to connect with and enjoy art. I don't know what kind of sense she was able to make of what she saw, or even if she was always able to tell what the statues were supposed to depict. It did seem, though, that she was able to notice basic similarities between different artworks, and between artworks and things she's seen before. She was calm (especially compared to her earlier crankiness), but also alight with interest. Her behavior showed that she responded to the beauty around her, even if she lacked the cognitive and linguistic ability to express much of her response.
Her response was especially interesting to me in light of what's often seen as the self-evident common sense that children should be kept out of adult spaces, because they're not old enough to appreciate them and will only cause disruptions. Surely, if anything short of a porn theater qualifies as an "adult space," you'd think it would be a gallery of classical European art. And yet, there's no way I could say that Alex didn't appreciate it in her own way. I'm sure that other toddlers would too, if allowed to wander at the pace of their own interests rather than being dragged behind their parents.
