Date with Max

When in New York over the holiday break, Max and I got to spend a morning in the MoMA with our good friends, Ann and Sam. It was our best date ever. We've been to lots of museums as a family, but maybe because this was the first time where we were out to museum as "equals," or maybe it's becuase he has an art class at school where he's studied some of these pieces and their artists (and there's nothing like an adult-who's-not-your-parent telling you to appreciate something), he was really connecting with the art in a way I'd never seen him do before. He (and I!) was thrilled about how much of the collection he could recognize.

A few of the highlights:

In the special exhibit about Seurat when I was explaining Pointillism and we were examining the technique and the artwork, he came to a particularly impressive piece and exclaimed, "Whoever painted this painting is really good!"

Taking notes to share with his art teacher at school what he had seen and felt.

At the collection of Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol there was a particularly large crowd gathered around listening to a museum employee explaining the pieces. Being only six years old and not aware of crowd etiquette (and too quick for his mom to stop him) Max worked his way to the front of the crowd. When the docent opened her lecture up for questions, Max immediatly raised his hand and asked why in the "Onion" soup can picture did it say "Made with Beef Broth" and none of the rest of them did? There were a few polite chuckles in the crowd, and I'm sure that people were thinking something like, only a child would ask something so silly or so obviously not a part of how this collection should be examined. And I was mentally preparing myself to have to tell him that it was very brave of him to ask a question and then come up with a real answer to satisfy him since he surely wasn't going to get one right then. But I could have kissed the docent for her answer. Instead of laughing him off, she replied that this was a very important observation because often people look at these cans as a whole and think that it's just a bunch of cans, identical and assembly line-like in their creation and that they get the gist of what they should see. Surely what makes this a really interesting piece and a striking statement about pop culture is that it is "the collection" of cans, but that it's easy to forget that each can is an interesting and unique piece of art on it's own. And she thanked him for reminding her about such a good insight.


"Hey, this is in our family room!"


"Could I really paint this myself?"

"Can I have one of these for my bedroom?"

"Hey, Grandma Smith has this at her house!"

Thanks for the tickets, Ann--we loved it! Let's do it again next time!