My Visit to the Art Museum (aka "My Kid Could Paint That")

Well, that was a bit of a disappointment. I took a vacation day yesterday to accompany my daughter and her class to the Philadelphia Art Museum for a field trip. My disappointment wasn't in the museum. Nor was it in the kids. It wasn't even in the fact that I had to take a vacation day for something I really had very little interest in doing. My disappointment lies in not having found some great kid-related blog material in the experience.

You figure a field trip is bound to deliver some good stuff. There are children involved, after all, and you know how much I love the little dears. But alas, aside from deafening noise on the bus and interesting lunch bag contents, the kids gave me little to work with. The best quip I overheard came from one of the chaperoning dads who was informing a chaperoning mom about his family's atheist status and efforts to improve the image of atheists as a whole by doing good deeds.

What turned out to be most interesting about the day was the Art Museum itself, and that's what I least expected. See, I'm an art snob. As in "My kid could draw that," not "I believe Picasso did his finest work during the Blue Period." I'm honestly not certain I'd ever been to the Art Museum before. I never had any desire to go, imagining a bunch of paintings that said nothing and meant nothing to me.

And I did see several of those pieces that make you go "hmmm..." While flash photography was not permitted, I was able to snap these beauties with my cell phone camera:

Abby & Michaela reviewing a bunch of colored squares. Abby loved this one.

Seriously? It's white paper with three black lines.

Green Cyclone. My kid could paint that.

1970s KMart wall art?

This crap art was what I expected. Stuff I don't understand. Can't interpret. Prefer to laugh at.

But along with the goofy abstract art, I was surprised to find art I could appreciate. Works of realism agreed with me and I particularly enjoyed the wings filled with pottery, sculpture, coats of armor, religious artifacts, and other "history museum" type pieces. The museum tour guide's interaction with the students was probably as illuminating for me as it was for them.

So now I'm thinking I might like to take an art appreciation class. Who knows, I may even learn to see something in the wacky pieces shown above. In the meantime, let's have some fun with those pieces. In the comment section below, share your critical analysis of one or more of them:

• Give it a title 
• What did the author have in mind? 
• What does it say to you? 
• Would you hang it on your wall?

Look forward to seeing what you have to say!