Fun with Forms!*

Or, "Silliness with Stanchions!"

("Vivacity with Vitrines"?)

*Credit for the title goes to my co-volunteer, Miss S!

I was privileged to assist with a small, local exhibition in the last few weeks.  One of my historic house friends was on the exhibition committee and, because of my museum background, asked if I'd like to help out.  The timing wasn't great, but the request was tempting.  So I said yes.  And I'm so glad I did.  Besides the actual experience of creating and installing an exhibition, I especially enjoyed meeting and working with some wonderful people, whom I hope I see again soon.

Of course, in my museum career I was an educator--not a curator, an exhibition designer, a registrar, or an art handler.  But I know how to write label copy and have strong opinions about didactics.  So, I helped write some explanatory text.  Short, concise, coherent.

And then I helped with many other things, from choosing the objects to assisting with the design plan, from discussing the theme of the exhibition to exploring accessibility issues (spacing, label font size), from considering installations (which topic where, groupings of objects) to considering exhibition design (like backdrops), from mounting text and photos to installing objects.  It was great fun . . .particularly because I wasn't in charge of anything, knew none of the politics, and came and went as I could.  I was like a guest at a museum buffet.

And it was good.

So, why "fun with forms?"  Because several times I helped dress mannequins, having to pin them together, rearrange drapery, relocate dress forms, stuff batting up sleeves, and, most amusingly, use batting to turn a female dress form into a man!  By then, my co-volunteers and I definitely had the giggles and nothing could have been funnier.

In many ways, this was much more fun than actually working in a museum with objects and exhibition professionals could ever be . . . and I know--because I was often shushed away by tense registrars and handlers, much less ever allowed to touch anything!

DreamWorksop

On Saturday, we took a little outing to a wonderful place:  the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop, in Hamden.  A small, local museum in an old munitions factory where inventor and guns manufacturer Whitney worked on interchangeable parts and muskets.  Now the museum--which isn't really, in the sense that there isn't much of a collection or historical interpretation on view--functions primarily as a hands-on imagination workshop for kids and grown-up kids.  Every week there is a different craft, more of a woodworking/design/invention activity than the more traditional art museum paint/scissors/glue activity (admission is generally free but there is a fee for the craft kit, about $9).  And the kids loved it.  They made wooden trains, starting with gluing blocks together, then attaching axles and wheels, which they tacked together, ending with decorating.  All while wearing safety goggles.  With great concentration, they focused on all the details and carefully completed their work, surrounded by walls full of other projects, from catapults to castles, puppets to pull toys.  It really had that wonderful dusty, cluttered, full of inspiration workshop feel, magical even.  The staff, of predominantly very young (high school?) volunteers, were extremely kind, encouraging, and helpful.  When the kids were done with their project, they experimented with the wall of marble runs, including Pascal's Triangle and Archimedes's Screw.  Special for the holidays was Mr.Gilbert's Train, a large model train layout complete with New Haven green and a circus, plus, best of all, trains that the kids could take turns driving.  Then we all went across the covered wooden bridge to see the mill's "waterfall" and to walk in the park some.  It's a great place and we'll definitely be going back.  

The Marvelous Met

Our visit to the Met yesterday was astounding.  Of course, I always love going to the Met, but this was momentous for a variety of reasons:  I hadn't been since before April, when I reinjured my back, missing several exhibitions I had hoped to see; I still find standing on hard surfaces for a long time a challenge and the floors at the Met are stone; and I had long awaited the reopening of the Islamic galleries, now the Art of Arab Lands and it just opened to rave reviews (see also here for a discussion of the challenges of presenting Islamic art).

The new galleries, officially galleries for the Art of Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia (yes, that is way too long, but it conveys less a false monolithic entity and more the diversity that was a vast region over 1500+ years), are glorious (see here in pics from the NYTimes and the Met):

Look at those floors in the introductory gallery!  (You can't see it here, but one gallery had glass lanterns hanging above the historical objects which inspired them)  And the alternately warm and dramatic lighting in the other galleries!  The replication of both palatial and intimate settings to engage directly with the objects! The labels were informative, but not too, and were well placed.  I applaud both the designers and the curators.  Of course, my favorite space, the space I remembered from eight plus years ago, before the galleries closed, the one Mama had never seen until I took her, on what was our ultimate date at the Met (followed by a walk down Fifth and dinner at Carnegie Deli one Friday night), was the Damascus Room, a receiving room bringing together so many of the arts on display, with the wonderful trickling fountain:

It was even more wonderful than I had recalled.  It, and all the objects, shine in this new interpretation and installation, such an improvement over the old, shabby galleries.  Warm, inviting, comfortable, were words that came to mind--these are galleries I will visit again and again, being happy to wander and linger.  Now, I'm not fully conversant with the breadth and depth of the arts of Arab lands, having only touched upon them in classes on other topics or in exhibitions tangentially related.  But for the purpose of our first view of the galleries and an introduction of the art to the kids, that was not a hindrance, especially because of the visual power of the objects.

The kids had a scavenger hunt that we'd picked up from the information desk and so were on the lookout for numerous objects, from details in manuscript illuminations to repeating patterns in large carpets, from ceramic plates to metal incense burners.  Between finds, we admired the floral and animal themes; followed the intricate (seemingly) symmetrical, repeating, interlocking patterns; counted the numerous references to battling animals (large cat vs ibex, on carpet, illumination, book binding, and dagger hilt); spotted the embedded calligraphy; admired the tiny details in the illumination; wondered at how mosaics, tilework, even ceiling engravings are joined; and thrilled at several depictions of rabbits.

Perhaps the most revelatory aspect of the new galleries was stepping out of them into the adjacent 19th-century European paintings galleries, the first one hung with Orientalist works by the likes of Gerome.  We played compare and contrast::  here were oil paintings, numerous depictions of humans (there are some in Islamic art; not all believed in the prohibition of the depiction of humans), a focus on the "exotic," the Other.  Even to first graders, it was obvious that these second-hand depictions by outsiders paled in comparison to the real thing.  And professionally speaking, even though my beloved European 19th-century galleries were renovated about 20 years ago, they look old and tired in comparison with their new neighbors, particularly because in these galleries paintings are removed from their original contexts, which were elaborate houses of rich patrons, complete with furniture and other objets d'art, well-illuminated and hung in rows on the "dead" (at least no longer white) walls of the museum/mausoleum.  While the art of Arab lands is displayed all together (not manuscripts here, mosaics there in some kind of surgical separation of media that plagues the study of European art, subdivided as painting, decorative arts, sculpture, textile etc), it avoids the ethnographic, exotic Other feel of natural history museums--this is art on par with all the other art in the museum, with each object as worthy of study as the oil paintings on the line.

Really, I could go on and on, but I'm not sure it would convey the depth of my appreciation for the galleries. And for the day.  I was so proud, so happy, so excited, so relieved to have made it to and through the museum--two hours without any real problems--I'd be standing at a carpet and find myself in tears at the wonderfulness of it all.  I am so grateful to Mama, for handling all of the logistics, and to the kids for humoring me (when they really wanted to go to Egyptian!).  They were a delight, enthusiastically exploring every gallery, soaking in an art very new to them.  We then went outside for food--the carts are almost better than the cafeteria, with new gourmet pretzels and organic cupcakes, with of course, the standard hot dogs.  We ate, swatted away pigeons, people-watched, and enjoyed the buskers singing Motown tunes. We bought a few postcards and a catalog.

And planned our next visit . . . .

EPIC WIN!!!!!

An Historic SuperBetter Day

It probably should have been my SuperBetter Epic Win, it was that big a day on Thursday:  I gave a tour at the historic house!  In my costume!  To Sis's Girl Scout troop!  With Bud there, too!  Yep, a very special day.  And it went something like this . . .

After welcoming them to the house, I told them we would be traveling back through time and that I was dressed to take them through my 350-year-old house.  I let them point out what was anomalous about my outfit and they eventually spotted my therapeutic sneakers (a big docent no-no!  But this was unofficial).  Bud also said that my eyeglasses were wrong, since Ben Franklin invented them, which he'd read recently in a book (and it's partially true--Franklin did invent bifocals, but glasses had been around, but not common, for hundreds of years).

We went inside to help the kids make their own mop caps (appx 18" diameter muslin circle with slits about 1.5" from edge and a few inches apart gathered with yarn) so they'd feel dressed for the period.   While they worked, I talked about my costume--my layered skirt (and how I'd wear  more and heavier layers for winter), my separate pockets ("Lucy Locket lost her pocket"), my always-covered head, how they had few outfits and only washed the layer next to their bodies (and usually only took sponge baths!), how clothes were not purchased ready-made but sewn out of purchased fabric by tailors or the women in the family (except during the war) and that clothes were patched and passed down because they were valuable, how boys wore dresses until they were "breeched" sometime in young childhood, and how girls never wore pants.  This last fact shocked the all-pants-wearing troop the most.  But that's because we didn't talk about how they didn't wear underwear!

Appropriately covered, we headed into the kitchen to talk about other aspects of colonial life:

• lighting by candles, oil lamps, firelight, increased by reflections off pewter plates or mirrors, but especially sunlight--how they woke with and went to bed with the sun
• heat only by fireplace, compounded by lower ceilings, smaller windows, heavier clothes and blankets, and foot- and bed-warmers
• transportation by foot because only the rich had horses or carriages
• sleeping altogether, with parents and siblings, in rope beds or pallets
• children's chores:  sewing, helping with the cooking, cleaning (with a broom made of sticks), feeding the livestock, fetching water, carrying wood, gathering eggs (eggs were more seasonal then, with chickens not laying in cold months), making butter (another seasonal food because cows didn't give milk in winter)
• food harvesting (and the long tradition of harvest festivals, even before the official Thanksgiving holiday in 1863) and preservation, especially the popularity of drying apples and making pies to eat at every meal (and why you just couldn't leave whole apples in the cellar--rot, mice, thieving kids!).  Also how the big meal was in the middle of the day.
• how water was not the drink of choice because it was easily contaminated and could make you sick; they drank cider and hot tea, often made from leaves broken from bricks of tea from China

Then, in the waning afternoon light, without turning on any electricity, they kids worked on weaving projects.  I showed them all the tape, or ribbon, in my clothes--my cap, shift, and gathering my skirts--and demonstrated how it was woven on my replica colonial tape loom.  Then they did some decorative circle weaving on paper plates (notch a plate with an uneven number of slits, set "warp" by crossing through center and passing to next slit, weave over-under in a circle, changing colors whenever), similar to the woven rag rugs they were all seated upon.  

After everyone had left, while Mama and I were cleaning up, Sis and Bud played house in the enormous fireplace--sweeping, baking, stirring the kettle, churning butter, fetching wood and water.  Watching them bring history alive for themselves is why I love being a docent.  

Definitely a "Power Up" moment.

Once Upon a Time....

We went to the Florence Griswold museum this weekend to see their fall family-friendly exhibition of fairy-tale birdhouses arrayed across the scenic grounds (yes, it's where we saw the fairy houses two years ago).  These fantastic, whimsical artistic creations, more sculpture than shelter, depicted aspects of well- and little-known fairy tales.

And thankfully, we'd spent the week shoring up our knowledge of fairy tales by reading a couple every night.  Because the kids haven't seen most of the Disney movies, the stories of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and the like were new to them.  But even if they'd seen the movies, these were different versions--no, not the PC or feminist versions out there--the traditional gross, violent, harshly just Grimms and Anderson versions, with the blinding of Sleeping Beauty's prince, the burning-at-the-stake of the witch tormenting Snow White, the torturous hot-iron shoes of Cinderella's stepmother, the sacrificial death of the Little Mermaid, etc. Sis said, "Mom, are all fairy tales so wicked?'

Yes, yes, they are.

But that's the point.  Children on their own (which is why the parents are dead or even oppressive) navigate their quests through a scary, harsh world full of good and evil and usually triumph (sometimes with sacrifices or help).  Consider their origins.  Of course, it's not real, because of the magic, but the notions of good and evil are perhaps accurate in that they exist, have power, and also a remote chance of winning (which they don't, often, in sanitized versions).    However, the stories aren't perfect.  Again, consider their origins.  We had to address the sexism, racism, and entitlement in the stories, with Jack stealing from the giants and Hansel and Gretel eating the witch's house and the rescues of several of the helpless women.  We also learned a few things:  don't take food from strangers; 16 is a dangerous age for girls; and cleverness really helps.  

They knew most of the stories as we wandered searching for the birdhouses.  My favorite was an elaborate wooden creation with straw, gold thread, and a tower, all built on a real spinning wheel.  Yep, Rumpelstiltskin.  Sis liked the birdhouse of Little Red Riding Hood, but only because there was a bunny hidden in the woods.  Bud preferred the Wizard of Oz (which we hadn't read but I'd told them the bare essentials), complete with Dorothy's house on the Witch with the red slippers and a yellow road leading through poppies to an Emerald City.  Mama liked the Owl and the Pussycat, with its detailed interior decoration inside a guitar, compete with photos of the lovebirds.  We also enjoyed meeting the artist of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse and talking to her about her creative process; she also read the story to a group of kids.

We had picked up a great little lunch beforehand, from a cafe run by Laotian refuges--Mama loved the pho and two kinds of rolls (fresh and fried).  But we grew hungry during our ramblings and picked up a cheese platter (mmm, Winsleydale!  Bud liked it too), cookies (lime in Lyme!), and brownies at the museum.  We even got ice cream afterwards--chocolate and strawberry, of course, plus pumpkin and ginger (very citrusy and fresh).

Our fairy-tale adventure actually ended the next day as we watched Into the Woods, the Sondheim musical merging several stories.  The kids enjoyed identifying the characters and the plots ("What story is the baker?" Sis wanted to know) hummed along to the tunes, but didn't see the second act because, well, Mama and I weren't ready to explain how everything gets messed up and then fixed, in its own way.  Some other weekend.  We finished the weekend by reading Eloise, a modern fairy tale included among the birdhouses.  The kids seemed nonplussed by, even uninterested in, Eloise's precocious ways at the Plaza.  Thank goodness.

Because fairy tales are fun to read but no one really wants to live in one . . . especially the traditional ones!

The Second Holiday

Today we celebrated Native American Heritage Day, though we didn't know it when we set out this morning to visit the Mashantucket Pequot museum. With the celebration of Thanksgiving and all the discussions of first peoples at home and at school, Sis and Bud have been very interested in Native Americans these days. So we decided to revisit the museum.

Our favorite part of the Pequot museum is the walk-in, life-size, recreated village panorama, with several wigwams and numerous Pequots performing various tasks from hunting to weaving, fishing to cooking. Sis particularly likes the medicine man healing the sick warrior. Bud likes spotting various animals and activities; today it was find-the-papoose (since he made a paper one at school which he has been wearing along with his bow). They both loved operating and listening to the audio tours on "magic wands." They went from number to number, learning about aspects of village life.

Today there was a special performance of a puppeteer and ventriloquist ("venticklist!"), Buddy Big Mountain. At first the kids were nonplussed . . . because they didn't realize he was making all the voices, songs included! Such modern, high-tech kids--they thought it was a recording. They were pretty amazed when they realized how it all worked. Though, many of the jokes (like the one about "Custer had it coming") went over their heads. But we did learn that it was the relatively new annual observation of Native American Heritage Day, always celebrated the Friday after Thanksgiving.

As per usual, we ended our visit in the shop, where we finally consented to Bud having a bow with an arrow (and Sis got yet another critter, this time a woolly mammoth). I picked up a James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Spirit of the Harvest, and hope to cook up some more appreciation of indigenous peoples here at home this weekend, another way to celebrate Native American Heritage Day.

On Vacation: Friday

• Going inside a real castle: We're such early risers and the DC schedule isn't prepared for tourists who want to go places at 8 a.m. The kids were up and rearing to go on Friday and, even though we killed as much time at the hotel as we could, we were still on the Mall, after a very exciting shuttle ride to the Metro and awfully steep escalator ride down into the Metro and Metro ride to the city (and even though they've been on city buses and subways in NYC, it was relatively novel). So we walked the Mall a bit and went into the red Smithsonian Castle, which opens early at 9 a.m. We looked around at all the little exhibits, examples from each of the SI museums, admired the 1847 Gothic-inspired architecture, and had a snack in the main hall. Sis devoured a whole croissant while Bud ate yet another fruit cup. (I could subtitle our trip "Of Fruit Cups and Chicken Fingers). And we smooshed some pennies. I think this started, on this trip (it really started with Gong at the Bronx Zoo!), at Gettysburg, but the machine was broken. But we managed it about everywhere else, including the Zoo, Natural History, Smithsonian Castle, Air and Space, National Aquarium, and Maryland rest stop.) We took to saving all our quarters and pennies.
• Then two rides on the carousel, one of Sis's favorite things of the whole trip . . .it's not a pretty or historic carousel, but it is fast and has long rides, so it scores high on our list of favorite carousels. Especially because the views of the Mall are pretty impressive. Sis rode the aquamarine sea creature the second time and couldn't have been happier.
• . . . right after finding and blowing more dandelions. Dandelions could be yet another subtitle of our trip: "Our Search for Dandelions and Smooshed Pennies." You see, Sis was just amazed that dandelions in DC had reached the "puffy" stage while those in CT were still in the yellow-flower stage. They've been ready to blow dandelions since the yellow flowers first appeared and were only too happy to do it in DC. Noted Sis, "Washington DC, you know, has a lot of dandelions. They're so puffed." We did a few at Gettysburg but were looking for a chance in DC, since they were always spotting them out the window. But the Mall is relatively mowed, with no dandelions, except in a few roped-off areas. And you guessed it, we let her go in and pluck a few. And she was very happy. (I thought she'd be more cautious about entering this roped off area, but it was Bud who only ducked in and then out quickly. And no worries, there was another kid nearby picking grass too. It wasn't a memorial or monument area).
• Air and Space: This is apparently the most-visited museum in the country. And it was indeed packed with kids running every which way, taking pictures the whole time. Sis took several pictures in the lobby of the various space modules/capsules. Bud marveled about how the museum suspended the planes from the ceiling. Off all the exhibits, they loved the Skylab--with its collapsible shower and exercise bike and living quarters in space--and the moon rover which we sat and sketched for a long while (and ooh, what a disaster that almost was--I realized I forgot Bud's paper and pencil pack when we were at the Castle--much upset with no remedies at the time--so Mama had to run to the Air and Space shop to find replacements, including a "space pen.") and the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo and the Wright Flyer (and it is the real one! not a replica! Bud liked the kite better. Sis liked taking pictures of it) and the telescopes and infrared sensors. I was most amazed by the Cold War missiles, which were not there when I last visited in approximately 1985, during the Cold War. I remember being so scared of being bombed by Russians . . . and here were the very rockets on display. Gave me the shivers. The kids got rockets and space shuttles to play with, and even tasty candy moon rocks but no space ice cream!
• Headed to the National Museum of the American Indian. And it's gorgeous--curving sandstone exterior with water features and rocks and native plants. On this increasingly hot (82+F) day you could feel the change in temperature as you approached the museum. I had trouble calling it the Museum of the American Indian, vividly remember "Indian" being drilled out of me at some point in school Apparently, now, it's okay again, a term embraced over the more legalistic (and imposed on them) "Native American." Though, truly, I understand, from my new book Do Indians Live in Tipis? (yes, that spelling has also changed), that the preferred term is actually whatever specific tribe name is under discussion, i.e. avoiding generalizations in favor of acknowledging the diversity and differences of native tribes. Our goal was the cafeteria; we had heard that the food was incredible. And it was--squash and bean tamale pie with a side of guacamole plus cabbage and hominy and stewed white beans, a three sisters soup, fry bread with honey, spicy pickled vegetable empanada, smoked boniato (and sweet potato) salad, cherry aqua fresca, atole, lime/hibiscus/chipotle aqua fresca, tres leches cake, strawberry corn pone, orange cake. And, yes, chicken fingers. There might have been more but that's all I remember. As for the museum itself, well, the building is beautiful, highly symbolic--loved the "woven" walls and rainbow light. But the museum as collection was confusing. I couldn't figure out the mission--is it to educate the general public? At this it fails miserably as most of the exhibits and installations I saw are so particularized and detailed that they almost have no meaning to the general visitor beyond. Okay, sure, the little introductory movie was good, set in an original space utilizing a variety of media, but it was too general to be much use. The rest of the collections are just the opposite: too particular to be interesting. I wasn't looking for a "cowboys and Indians" history but I did want something I could grasp. I mean, I walked through small rooms about the cosmologies of 6 or so different regional variations of tribes I'd never heard of. The minimal number of artifacts were interesting but left you wanting more, particularly because the accompanying text was so dense. This has the very negative effect of reducing the artifacts to being "pretty" or the like. Frustrating. Each tribal room was accompanied by pictures of the people from the tribe who organized the space, as if to say this is one family's way of doing things, which strikes me as Medici-like self-aggrandizement. Now, if the mission of the museum is to honor Indians (and the Indian curators who put things together) for a specifically Indian/insider audience, I can't evaluate if they've accomplished it or not. Because, being turned off by that first exhibition, I didn't bother to go anywhere else in the museum (which has spent a hefty sum on interactive technologies--Sis loved all the folktale videos and Bud liked the animal artifact kiosks). It's too bad, really, because I have really enjoyed our visits to the Mashantucket Pequot museum (and they were huge financial and organizational contributors to the NMAI), but it better manages the insider/outsider equation while being very tribe- and location-specific.The museum as an institution is very young and so I imagine it will find its stride and some balance in the long run; in the short, go eat and then head somewhere else. Which is pretty much what everyone seemed to be doing (and what all the online reviews I've read say too).
• I had dinner with the woman I'd met up with the day before and another friend I know from years and years ago. We had a nice catch-up conversation over pan-Asian food. The second friend left us after dinner and my college friend and I--who had hosted each other's baby showers--talked shop about kids. And I realized, as I always do, that I wished I stayed better in touch with her the rest of the time.

Philhellenism

Then

I have long loved ancient Greece, and with it, where its remnants (mostly) live and are celebrated, modern Greece. My obsession with Greece started way back so long ago, when I was in the single digits, after Star Wars fandom but before teenaged dedication to pop musicians like Wham! and Culture Club. (Actually, thinking about it, perhaps my love of all things Star Wars paved the way for my love of Greek mythology and history, or so a reading of Joseph Campbell would have you believe.) I made temples to the gods at the beach of our bayhouse, dressed as Artemis and Athena for Halloween, had a pen pal in Athens (Yiassou, long lost Martha Bitsopoulou, wherever you now roam), took Latin because it was the closest to an ancient language I could get at my high school, went to Greek festivals and restaurants, traveled to Greece twice, paid homage to the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum when I went to London, and even declared a classical studies major in college, taking 8 semesters of ancient Greek language.

The New Acropolis Museum opened last week, what looks to be a beautiful, modern home to the archaeological treasures of the Parthenon, Erechtheion, etc. Well, all except, of course, as you probably know, the sculptures that make up the Elgin Marbles, which were looted in the early 19th-century by Lord Elgin, then ambassador to the Ottoman Empire which held Greece. Let us not get into that here (instead, go read Kimmelman, Hitchens, and Konstandaras etc.), if only because, while the temperature of that debate has been taken up several degrees with the completion of a suitable, safe home for the marbles, the disagreement between Greece and the British Museum is not likely to be settled, ever, to the satisfaction of all involved.

But I strongly remember my first visit to the "old" Acropolis Museum with its remaining damaged Caryatids housed in a dimly lit, thin case with dust visible everywhere. Even as an 18 year old on her first trip out of her own country, I knew enough to see that the museum was in tatters, that the marbles were better off in London, even though I had yet to see them there. Seeing everything I'd read about, dreamed about, was wonderful but also bittersweet; the state of it all often made me sad, like people who have beloved pets that they just can't take good care of. Despite that--because of that?--I have long had a soft spot for Greece and wished for its people a reunion with one of their most treasured masterpieces. And when the Olympics went off spectacularly, pretty much without a hitch, I had hopes for the country, maybe not for the return of the marbles, but even just for the possibility of being viewed without bemusement, frustration, and pity, as they had always seemed to be by their European (and American, though our relationship with Greece is different than Europe's) cohorts.

And it makes me want to go back. To create new memories of the Acropolis and its museum (which houses some ten times more than the old one), of the country as a whole, that has, in a way, grown up--which seems so patronizing to say of the many millennia-old homeland of Homer, Socrates, Euripides, Sappho, and Phidias--in the 20 years since I was there. I too have grown up in 20 years. And I'd love to go back again, both to Greece and to my childhood love, if only to see how Greece, and, perhaps as importantly, I have changed.

Now

The More Things Change . . .

Huge oval conference table.

Big conference room chairs.

Table tents with names.

Half-sandwiches and wraps with toothpicks on plastic trays.

Bottled water.

Trouble with the computer projector.

Trouble with the room temperature.

More absentee attendants than expected.

Handouts.

Introductions.

Powerpoint presentation with bullet points.

And a Venn diagram.

Objectives.

And goals.

Outcome.

Impact.

Evaluation.

Assessment.

Quantifiable.

Measurable.

Realistic.

Bloom's taxonomy.

Gardner's multiple intelligences.

Warm-up exercise.

Passion.

The future.

Community.

Multiculturalism.

Enrichment.

Break-out session.

Assignment.

Small group discussion.

Note taking.

Different understanding of assignment.

And program.

And language.

Jargon.

Informal learning.

Object-based education.

Learner-centered education.

Inquiry-based method for discussing works of art.

"What else do you see in that picture?"

Visual thinking strategies.

And Phil Yenawine.

Critical thinking.

Lifelong learners.

Curriculum.

"Repeat and validate."

Bathroom break.

Big cookies.

Coffee.

Group discussion.

Review notes.

Compare ideas.

NAEA.

Conference proposal.

Complaining about shortage of time.

And money.

And staff.

And lack of enthusiasm.

Meeting goes late.

. . . the more things stay the same.

"Was Gommie a Chimpanzee?"

On Saturday, with none of the prior planning that is our trademark, we went to the American Museum of Natural History in the city. Since our successful visit to the Met last month, we had promised the kids a trip to the "big dinosaur museum." The morning of, however, Sis wasn't particularly keen to see the dinosaurs but was enticed to participate with promises of butterflies and bunnies. And we saw both.

First up, the museum's living butterfly exhibition, where you enter an 80F quonset hut filled with flowers and flitting butterflies. Brilliant Monarchs, spotted Owls, and, Sis's favorite, the shimmering Blue Morpho (a la Diego fame). "They're beautiful," crooned Bud. None of them actually landed on us, but we did see an educator feed an Owl butterfly some orange slices, its giant proboscis sucking the nectar. I liked how the room danced with colors. It was a great start to our visit.

Bud and I then headed to the main lobby to see the dinosaurs while Mama and Sis held back (I'm guessing she won't like Jurassic Park). Bud started chattering the minute he spotted them--look at how big, there's a baby, there are three, hey one is little-head-long-tail (our nickname for one of the dinosaurs in the Caillou game). On and on and on, to the particular amusement of the young couple next to us, who soon engaged Bud in a lively conversation about his favorite dinosaurs, his visit to the museum thus far, and the penguin he was holding up to see the dinosaurs (yes, Pengy and Amy the Bunny have now been to AMNH). He was very excited.

And became more so when we started touring the various dioramas, complete with animals from Africa, North America, and Asia. There were elephants, tigers, bears of all sorts, and so many things we couldn't identify. I think the North American hall was their favorite--Bud especially became excited upon spotting a white bunny in a diorama and raced off to find Sis, who was admiring a cottontail bunny in another section of the hall. Together they ran hand in hand to see the "xiao bai tu" (little white bunny). There were a few dioramas that gave us all pause, "Mommy, why is that zebra lying down with all those birds?" How do you explain carrion to a 3 1/2 year old on a happy family outing? Next gallery, please.

"Mama, that whale is as big as a . . . panda bear!!" Sis exclaimed upon seeing the Blue Whale in the Hall of Ocean Life. Neither one of us actually understood her comparison, in that pandas just aren't that big, but it worked for her and she proceeded to wander the large hall admiring turtles, dolphin, manatees, walruses (walri??), sea lions, and the like. Bud, on the other hand, didn't like that hanging whale at all, nor the whale sounds emmanating from the ceiling. It took all our coaxing to get him in the room and he quite decidedly announced when we had finished our single circuit around the room that we'd done what we had set out to do.

Lunchtime. Always their favorite part. This time with "dino-nuggets." And lots of fruit.

Just to do their two favorite things together, we hit the gift shop next. We have a rule of thumb about gift shops--the kids can choose something that is approximately the cost of admission and approved by us. Bud picked up a giant stuffed snake but decided on a pop-up book on dinosaurs. Sis wanted the 50-piece safari playset but got a much smaller one with different animals. I chose a book, How to Visit the Science Museum with Your Grandmother, and Mama got her requisite patch and pin.

There was a special fair at AMNH on Saturday, "Polar Weekend," featuring booths about various polar explorations, polar gear, polar environmental issues, and native cultures of the polar regions such as the Sami of northern Scandinavia and the Inuit. We looked through microscopes, made penquin popsicle stick puppets, pretended to build a penguin nest with tongs and rocks, made UV bead bracelets, watched a video of a walrus eating, drilled a block of ice with a giant screw-thingy, crawled inside traditional Sami tents and high-tech expeditionary tents, and finally went to hear a concert on traditional Inuit throat singing by the sister act Nukariik. The kiddos sat mesmerized for almost the whole performance, evening singing along to the audience participation part. I think they liked the way the songs mimicked nature, like seagulls, the river, and the mosquito. Mama and I were amazed (and reminded of Tuvan throat singing from that movie, Genghis Blues).

As we were leaving, I remembered how Sis and Bud have repeatedly asked me to see their bones. They are very interested in their bones, being able to feel but not see them. And there was a life-size human skeleton, missing all the "squishy bits," so we talked about bones, tapping our teeth to get a sense of the texture, counting ribs for kicks, and in general giggling about human bodies. Next to the human skeleton was that of a chimpanzee. I had already mentioned earlier this week that humans were "related" to apes and so I pointed out the comparison and reminded them that humans had evolved from apes. This of course was confusing and led to the best question of the day--you guessed it, the title of this post: "Was Gommie a chimpanzee?" I think it's going to take a few more visits to get that straightened out.

But on the way out the door, we asked the kids, now veteran NYC museum-goers, if they'd rather take Gommie to the science museum or the art museum. Gommie, looks like you better bone up on your biology, we're going back to AMNH!

Books: Ella's Trip to the Museum

Elaine Clayton's illustrated children's book, Ella's Trip to the Museum (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc, 1996), playfully follows Ella's imaginative journey through an art museum. On a field trip with her class, Ella enters paintings and dances with statues while her increasingly stern teacher gives a dry lecture to the class.

"Stay with us, Ella! I want you to experience the art."
"But I am!"

While the book unfairly sets up adults such as teachers and guards as immune to the powers of art, it does introduce children to the imaginative possibilities of art and museums. The illustrations are light and cheery, with the depicted works of art alluding to the ballerinas of Degas, Baroque cherubs, and ancient Roman statues. This is a great prelude to a real visit to a museum, even if children might want to dance in the galleries!

Ask What You Can Read for Your Country

Several weeks ago, the NYTimes reported on the new NEA study that adults are reading more fiction books than in the last 25 years, reversing a trend where less than half of Americans over the age of 18 had read a play, poem, or work of fiction in the last 12 months.

Have you?

I've read several books, all histories and biographies (the biographies of George Eliot and Mrs. Beeton by Kathryn Hughes, Unredeemed Captive, to name a few off the top of my head. On my desk right now are histories of housework in both the U.S. and the U.K., as well as Taste: A Story of Britain through its Cooking ), but I don't think I've read a novel since the last Harry Potter book came out. Wait, when was Sarah Waters's Nightwatch, which was a Booker Prize finalist--I read that. (And I have Eric Carle memorized. Does that count?)

I am inspired to continue to squeeze reading into my daily activities, perhaps even expand my selections, by Michiko Kakutani's exploration of almost-President Barack Obama's reading habits. Her thumbnail list of his favorites include:

The Bible
“Parting the Waters,” Taylor Branch
“Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Gandhi’s autobiography
“Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin
“The Golden Notebook,” Doris Lessing
Lincoln’s collected writings
“Moby-Dick,” Herman Melville
“Song of Solomon,” Toni Morrison
Works of Reinhold Niebuhr
“Gilead,” Marilynne Robinson
Shakespeare’s tragedies

Except parts of the Bible and several of Shakespeare's tragedies, I'm embarrased to admit I haven't read any of those (I'm going to bet that my mom has read 75% of them, at least). I think I'll put Doris Kearn Goodwin's Team of Rivals on my list, right after Geraldine Brooks's March, which isn't on the list but is on my nightstand. I haven't been much of a fiction reader (excludng my devouring of "history mysteries" as twinkie reading during my grad school days) and am illiterate when it comes to contemporary, or late 20th-century, fiction, which is a constant source of shame and regret since everyone thinks I'm caught up.

Even with my ignorance of contemporary fiction, I value it and was saddened to read Stanley Fish's piece on "The Last Professor." While specifically about the decline of the importance of the liberal arts and humanities at colleges and universities, Fish's essay really chronicles the demise of art and the humanitites, some commentors (they aren't really commentators, right?) called it culture, in our society. Because some disciplines, including philosophy and literature and my own art history, have no practical use in a market-driven state, which focuses on efficiency, productivity, and transparency, they will simply disappear. When universities have a puprose outside of their walls, for instance as Judith Warner has described in investigating the pharmaceutical company-research university connection, the universities and professors become corrupt. Considering Enron, Madoff, Wall Street, to name just a few, has a market-based, practical, producing society really stood us in good stead? There is money, of course, and the advantages it can buy, but beyond that? It's like major league sports . . . beyond making money, do they have value that transcends, say, books? If books could make money (which all indications are that they, and bookstores, are not), would this be a discussion?

Even if I don't read novels--or study philosophy--I want them to exist and for people to study them in a world far removed from the demands of the marketplace, just as I immersed myself in art history for so many years and still visit museums to revisit and rekindle that love. Intriguingly, in the essay, Fish referred to such places, the wealthy universities, as "functioning almost as museums." This seems to recall Theodor Adorno's notion of a museum as mausoleum, containing only dead artifacts and no longer relevant to "living" society. Are books and art really dead to us? Not to our new president, thankfully. And maybe Obama's own dedication to culture and the life of the mind will continue and encourage the trend that the NEA has spotted. And Stanley Fish will be wrong. Because in the end, I don't think Fish wants to be right.

I think I'm going to log off and go read.

Post-Visit Activity: Paper, Paper Everywhere

One of my favorite parts of visiting a museum, beyond the art, is picking up all their pieces of paper: calendars, maps, brochures, and especially family guides. Is it any wonder that my favorite part of my career has been writing museum materials, be it curricula for teachers, family guides, program listings, or museum brochures? (If only I couldn've gotten my hands on my last museum's labels!) The Met is always wonderful inspiration, in this and other aspects of education, for they offer an educator's dream-come-true of printed materials. Yesterday, we came home with pamphlets about animals, dancers, armor, sketching, and the wonderful family map containing full-color poster with minute drawings of the collections.

That is probably the only piece of paper that won't end up in my files unused. It is a sad but well-known fact that visitors pick up all the materials at the information desk and either a). read them when they get home or b). never read them. Neither helps facilitate their visit, which means that they either a). don't need the help or b). don't want it. Even as a professional, I behave as a normal visitor, which is why my unpacked bag still contains clean copies of all the brochures I picked up.

Except that we devoured that family map. As I have mentioned, we spent a lot of time the night before our visit discussing the trip and the rules of the museum while looking at the map we printed off their website with the sarcophagus on the cover. The next day, as we were waiting for the program to start, I grabbed two in-house copies of the map, even though I had ours in my bag. Thus, I was surprised to see the poster inside. For 15 minutes, Bud and Sis oohed-and-aahed over the little pictures. "Mommy, I found the musical instruments!" and "Mama, where is that building inside a building?" I could point out where we would visit the arms and armor, where Sis would get to see her beloved baby Jesus (I know I keep mentioning this but, as a non-Christian UU, I am still fascinated by her obsession with Jesus. I won't have the heart to explain the true meaning of Easter--well, that is, if you aren't looking at Easter's pagan origins. Thank heavens she's also obsessed with bunnies and won't notice anything else), and look longingly at the 19th-century wing we wouldn't be visiting (once a Victorianist, always a Victorianist). This is a great map and the kids' response to it was exactly what the educators must have hoped: they became extremely enthusiastic about the museum, did some very concentrated looking and studying of the materials, and then let the map be their guide during our visit. The only downside: the museum doesn't sell a slightly larger version of the map in the Met Kids shop, where I went looking for it at the end of our visit. So, I did what any other educator would do--grabbed extra copies!

The Visit, Edited for Content*

Where there is art, there are nudes. And today proved no exception, especially because we visited the "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy" exhibition at the Met today. I had given them a quick talk before we entered, beyond "quiet voices" (special exhibitions are always so much quieter than the permanent collection), about how they were going to see a bunch of naked bodies (and yes, yes, I could expound on the differences between naked and nude, but not here, not now). No big deal. Everybody has a body and artist like to paint them. Here we go. I probably should've just waited 'til we came across one because they excitedly asked where the naked people were throughout the first few clothed galleries. But then Sis saw one: two toddler boys pulling on each other's penises, a painting on a childbirth tray. I wasn't there when she spotted it, but apparently she said, "They shouldn't do that." And then came and found me to show me the art. And ask for an explanation (Mama just stood by, curious to see what I'd come up with.) Bud immediately wanted to know, in a loud stage-whisper, why the boys were doing that. Because little boys do that, I said, you do that, and the whole room was about children (or childbirth and the works of art associated with it). Let the fun begin.

We talked about penises until we came across all the naked ladies. Sis said, "there are lots of mommies with no clothes on." This was the room with the Prado's Titian of Venus with the Organ Player and Dog, as well as the Met's Venus and Cupid by Lotto. And lots of other "naked mommies" (can't wait for the visitors who google that and show up here!). As I stood looking at the Titian, Sis queried, "why is that man staring at the naked lady?" And the man next to us seemed to leave rather quickly, while others turned to us bemused. Not ready to delve into the art history of it, I simply said, "Well, we're all looking at her because she's pretty." It's true, isn't it? I tried to interest Bud in other aspects of the painting--the organ, the peacock near the fountain, the deer in the park--but the glare on the painting ("all the white dots") made it and many others hard to see from his vantage point (something for me to remember when I start lecturing, I mean talking, to my kids about what we're seeing).

As interesting as all the nudes were (and I was really glad to have seen the show, even if I didn't get to linger at all), they weren't the best parts. Those were, predictably:

1. the cafeteria (chicken nuggets and fries in a paper taxi cab holder!!! "Mom, I've never eaten from a taxi before!" Sis exclaimed)
2. the elevators (and the broken escalator we didn't get to ride), even the ones where guards got to push the buttons instead of the kids
3. the automatic flush toilets (how have they not seen these before??)

There was some art in the top five, thankfully:

4. "the room with the building it in" (i.e. the Temple of Dendur gallery)

5. the jousters and horses (Arms and Armor)

Notice that the museum education program we specifically came to attend was not in that list? Actually, the program was pretty good (though I will fault their publicity materials for not providing any details about the structure of it, which would have helped in prepping the kids the night before). We all gathered with the lecturers and discussed the rules, old hat to my two by then and to many of the regulars in the group (of which there were several; made me wish we lived close enough to be a Met regular. But I don't have the quirky fashion sense of these urban mamas, and there wasn't a "Titanesque" one among them!). Then we moved to the modern art wing to discuss--get this, Dr. American Modern--Georgia O'Keeffe! Yep, our first museum program was about her paintings of bones, starting with a children's book called Georgia's Bones by Jen Bryant. Bud and Sis were entranced with the paintings, even with just being in the space, and so sat still and quietly while the lecturer read the story and started talking about the paintings. Then we moved on to an art project, coloring a piece of paper background and adding a cow's skull in the foreground. The kiddos loved flopping on their stomachs on the gallery floor to color on sheets of paper and weren't quite ready to stop when we moved on to talk about another painting. Sis, without being told, knew the painting was of a flower and she was the one--of all those kids--who raised her hand and correctly identified it. Mama especially was so proud. The kids soon became fidgety (the lecturer should've wrapped up but kept adding a few things and was losing her crowd. Old habits die hard, so I did thoroughly analyze her tour--good interaction with the kids, smooth transitions, nice pacing, varied activities--but I would get her to tighten it up a bit, both in length and in theme--I mean, she started the book, stopped to talk about the art, and never finished the book!) and we headed to lunch, only to find the cafeteria didn't open for 30 minutes.

Never, never, never try to see a museum with hungry kids. Oooooh, that was a long 30 minutes. And so, we pulled out all the stops, changed our itinerary, and headed to the Temple of Dendur, stopping to see the blue hippo/mascot William along the way. We'd gone to the shop while waiting for the program to begin and had bought 6 postcards of works of art that I thought we would be able to see during our visit: William the faience hippo; the Temple of Dendur; a Tiffany window; a suit of armor; Goya's portrait of a little boy with animals; and a Degas of dancers. We actually managed to visit all of them but the last. Both Sis and Bud had fun matching the images to the works in the gallery, Sis always being the first to spot the one we were searching for. Sis really liked little William and even chose a stuffed one as her souvenir of the day. Bud wasn't that interested. And while both admired the temple, neither wanted to get particularly close, being more interested in the sphinx, the water, and the crocodile with the broken tail.

We saw many other things: the Christmas tree in the Medieval Hall being dismantled behind barricades; several nativities and statues of Mary and the baby Jesus (still a favorite of Sis's); paintings of musical instruments (but not the real instruments, next time); the "new" Greek and Roman installation that Mama hadn't seen yet. We played lots of "I Spy," finding dragons, white horses, pianos, but no bunny rabbits. We couldn't squeeze in China, not wanting to give it short shift, nor visit the closed American sculpture court. As we kept repeating, to them and to ourselves, there is so much to see and you can never see it all. So we bought a stuffed hippo and a ukelele (for Bud), plus a few books--You Can't Take A Balloon into The Metropolitan Musuem of Art and Museum Shapes--and headed to the wonderful underground parking garage (which meant we didn't even have to carry in our coats, much less check them) and home. Inspired by our day, and ready and willing to come again.

****Title changed so people looking for porn quit coming to this post.

Pre-Visit Activity: Our Trip to the Met

We are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow. While it's not our first trip to an art museum, having been to The Art Institute of Chicago, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Folk Art Museum, it really is the big leagues: the kids are old enough to understand some of what they are seeing and we are actually attending a program while we are there. It will be their first museum education program, about which I am extremely excited.

So, while we have only told them here at the proverbial last minute that we are going, I have been long considering how we would prepare them. Tonight we looked over the Family Map from the Met's website and they were immediately struck by the cartoons of the woman stepping out of the sarcophagus on the cover. What was that? What was she doing? How do you explain sarcophagi to three year olds who can't comprehend death or after-life or ancient Egypt? Bud kept saying he didn't want to die and didn't want me to die because he didn't want us to go in the box; Sis wanted to die so she could get in the box. While morbid sounding, they really didn't understand the true impact of what they were saying, but it was disturbing nonetheless. And there is a lot of art about death (luckily there were no nudes in the map but there will be in the museum. I have that lesson ready too).

We got past that and started talking about rules at the art museum:

• We will talk in quiet, inside voices.
• We will walk and stick together.
• We will look with our eyes and not touch anything.

Why? Why can't they touch? Can they touch their maps? Of course, they can touch their maps or the postcards I promised to buy them at the shop. But they can't touch art. Why? Because our hands have greasy oils that eat art. Yes, even if they wash them. Oooooh. Works everytime, even if it is a bit dramatic. Good thing I've had lots of practice going over museum rules with kids.

But, Bud wondered, could we dance in the museum like that girl? That girl being Ella from Ella's Trip to the Museumby Elaine Clayton. Ella goes on a field trip to an art museum and communes, even enters, the works on display (and dancing with a statue of the goddess Flora), all while her teacher gives a boring tour (don't get me started on the representation of educators/docents in art museums in popular culture). Sis found the book in question and we read it. The guard gets angry, Bud notes. Yes, I reminded him that guards were there to protect the art and us the visitors; there would be no dancing in the Met tomorrow.

Even if I'm dancing in my head all the way there . . . .

My New Professional Blog

I was going to wait to premiere my new art history and museum education blog until there was more content, but NPR ran a feature about museums in the 21st century this evening and I wanted to comment on it.

So, check out another me at Look to Learn, Learn to Look.

I Heart Art

It looks like it's Valentine's Day at the Met. They've got a new exhibition entitled "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy," complete with paintings by Titian from the Prado. While the review in the NYTimes suggests that the show is inconsistent, I still think it sounds like a perfect way to warm up this winter (complete with 16th-century pornography!). Or to celebrate our impending nuptials. Whadya say, hon?

The Littlest Curators

Pietro Martini after Johann Heinrich Ramberg, The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1787, c. 1787, British Museum

My little artists have turned curator on me. Today during dinner, I had an idea to assign them each a door in our kitchen--one to the basement, one to the bathroom--for their artwork, which has overflowed on the fridge, magnetic wall, and kitchen cabinets. We chose locations with "eeny-meeny-miny-mo" (which they LOVE), with Bud getting the coveted basement spot and Sis acquiring the more visible bathroom door. They immediately abandonned food and started gathering stray works of art from other places, thrilled to be able to tape up their works by themselves (Sis prefers tape rolls on the back while Bud just likes one big, vertical, linear piece at the top).

And wouldn't you know it, they are both Academicians straight from London's Royal Academy or, with a nod to their French predecessors, the Academie des beaux-arts (can't find my accent marks in Blogger and can't recall when or if an adjective is ever capitalized, which is why, by the way, my expertise is in British not French art). They hung, beginning on the line, floor to ceiling, edge to edge (there being no frames). They even created works of art on the spot, which were subsequently "skyed."

It made my little academic art heart go pitter pat.

The Museum Section

Today is museum day in the NYTimes. So, for the next several days--as long as it takes me to read the dozens of articles--I will be immersed in my old world. I'm sure you'll hear about it.

It's almost as good as sleeping under the whales.

-=-=-=

OMG, DP is a saint!! She just went out to the "Stop n Rob" at 11:00 pm so that I could have a paper copy of the Museum section and not have to read it online. I do so like reading the "real" Times every now and again. She's such a sweetie. Thanks, DP!