Week of Celebrations, Part 2

Friday (12/26), Katy had a couple of appointments to go dress shopping and Joe ended up spending the day in bed not feeling well, but the rest of us decided to take advantage of some of the free fun at Forest Park.

Forest Park is home to the St. Louis Art Museum, and on Friday admission is free. They currently have a Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976 exhibit Mary Ann had seen and enjoyed. I thought the kids would enjoy seeing this type of art ... especially with Aunt Mary Ann's extensive knowledge of art history around to tell them fun little tid bits about the art. And since it was free, if it took us all of 15 minutes to walk through the exhibit, so be it, the children were exposed to the art and hopefully would walk away from the experience knowing one or two things they hadn't known before.

Rebecca, Emily and Sam really enjoyed the exhibit. My parents rented little iPods that gave some of the background on a selection of the pieces in the exhibit, and Rebecca and Sam would borrow those iPods whenever they came to a piece they really liked and wanted to know more about it. It's really too bad traveling exhibits like this one don't have recordings like this geared toward kids 5-16. The iPod recordings were done in the same "voice" as the descriptions next to each work of art, so it's a wonder the kids took anything away from what they heard. To my amazement and delight, the children really enjoyed their brief exposure to Action/Abstract art, and had a number of favorite pieces of art they could actually describe after our visit during lunch. (Mark Rothko's Red, Orange, Orange on Red; Jackson Pollock's Number 3, 1950, were two of their favorites.)

In retrospect, I think I would have done a couple of things differently to enhance the kids experience. First, I would have had my sister talk about more of her favorite paintings from the exhibit, so the children would have had things to look for - a mini scavenger hunt of sorts. They instantly recognized the one painting they overheard Mary Ann talk about and they each got very excited when they discovered it for themselves. From a distance the painting looks like a completely black canvas, but as you get closer you realize it's not black, but squares of really dark colors. (Ad Reinhardt)

Second, I would have rented an iPod for each of the kids. At the time I didn't think we would need them - we had Mary Ann after all - but Rebecca and Sam really enjoyed the freedom and the novelty of using the iPods they commandeered from their adult buddies, and I think Emily would have enjoyed it too had she had the opportunity to do the same.