fabrisse

An artist by the name of Jake Chapman was quoted in The Independent as saying children shouldn't be taken to art galleries because they can't appreciate the point the artist is trying to make.

Yes, I'm screaming. I loved going to art museums when I was a kid. One of my most visceral memories is of seeing Winged Victory (Nike of Samothrace) for the first time when I was seven. I would beg to be allowed to go to the National Gallery or the Portrait Gallery after church when we moved back to DC, and, from the time I was ten, my parents would let me go on my own.

Field trips to The Phillips Collection or the Corcoran were high points of my school year.

And then there was the tutoring when I grew up. One of the things I had the hardest time with, both in DC and Boston, was encouraging the students to develop their own tastes. Especially in DC, the students were hesitant to voice an opinion because they were afraid either of being "wrong" (in quotes because, while bad taste exists, it's still a personal taste and therefore can't be wrong) or of disagreeing with an adult.

And yet, some of the best times I've ever had have been with preteens at a museum. There was the girl next door who had a hard time keeping her hands off the Babylonian art and tried to touch the Van Gogh's. She didn't care for Egyptian art at all and thought Monet was a little dull (for the record, I like Monet better than Van Gogh and prefer Egyptian to Babylonian, but her enthusiasm was infectious.). The group I took to the National Gallery was fascinated by the Venetian paintings and had some very pointed comments about a nude that we passed. Some loved still lifes, others thought the carved table was the bomb (their word, not mine), and all of them adored Villareal's Multiverse installation.

How can anyone say that kids can't enjoy art? Worse, how can anyone say that a child isn't human yet?


Villareal's Multiverse (it's a little sped up)

My flight was cancelled last night due to the United computer glitch, so no Boston for me this weekend.

Two of my stranded compatriots decided to get to New York or New England by the 3:15 Amtrak departure and were dropped at Union Station just before I was let off.

I did the tourist thing, especially with the woman who lives in Albany but spends a great deal of time in Denver. She's a schoolteacher and the questions she asked about "the bad parts of town" were slightly prejudiced -- though to her credit she didn't know it until I explained and she seemed quite compassionate after I gave her a potted history of the city.

But she also did not know, nor did the other person in the van with us, that the District had no representation in Congress. They both asked a few questions, and I made my usual plea for them to ask their representatives to give me a representative (at least).

I also did some sightseeing spiel for them, since she'd never been to DC before and I included the tidbit that the statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol is actually slightly taller than the one of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial which is impossible to tell from the angles. I then mentioned that Jefferson Davis when he was Secretary of the Interior was responsible for the change to the headdress (it was originally supposed to be a French style Liberty cap) because he didn't want the slaves who were building the Capitol to get any ideas.

She said, "I don't like to hear about things like that," and shuddered.

It's part of our history. She's tall (at least compared to me), slim, and blue-eyed. How many people don't know because they don't like to hear about it?

It's amazing to me.