Forced Family Fun....

I am a lover of the arts.  I love music, artwork, museums, plays, musicals.... all of it.  And, I am determined to share and cultivate this love with my family.  Whenever we are planning to go someplace, I look up all the "sites" to see.  I get excited when I see the word "Museum" listed under places to visit.  When planning we often will sit around the dinner table at night discussing our upcoming trip and what we are excited to see and do.  The conversation usually goes well until I manage to slip the word "museum" into the conversation.  And if I dare mention "art museum" all conversation stops.  Usually my son groans out loud.  My husband is a little more motivated to keep me happy, so he usually says things like "Oh, that might be nice"  which is code for I'd rather stab a fork in my eye but I'll do it to make you happy.  Now, I'd like to say that I let my guys off the hook and tell them we won't do the museum, but then they will never have the chance to fall in love with art they way I want them to.  Plus-- I like that we will experience these things together as a family-- or as my son refers to it as, "Forced family fun time."

"The best way to truly understand art is to experience it."

A few years ago we went for the first time to Washington D.C.  Imagine my joy-- the national Mall if full of museums-- most of which are free.  Oh happy day.  And, they are not ALL art museums, they  also have the National Air & Space Museum, Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of American History.  So off we went to the mall museums to spend time together while exploring history and art.

This was the only piece of modern art Keagan really liked.... and I'm sure that had to do with his love for math and legos more than anything else.

Jeff and Keagan started to amuse themselves by renaming the statues.  They called this one "When Weeble Wobbles Fight"

This one they entitled "Angry Rabbit."  I'm not sure why,  it looks more like a dog to me....

This one immediately became known as the "Death Star."  I'll give them that one as that's the first thing I thought of as well.

And they both laughed forever over the renamed  Bob the Blob painting

They failed to appreciate Van Gogh - "Why is his face green?  That's one scary looking baby."

They like Renoir a little better-  "At least I know what it is"

Monet was dubbed "very girly"

They tolerated the statues far better.  Below are a couple of my favorites:

Little Dancer, a wax statuette by Degas

The Reading Girl by Magni

Keagan took one look at the portraits in the Portrait Museum and asked "What's with their hair?"  Ummmm.... I'm not sure.  Maybe it was really windy back then?

Sigh... But I keep trying because art is a great way to grasp history.  It encourages creative thinking. It forces you to look at things from a different perspective.  It encourages an emotional response.  It expands your view point.  It celebrates beauty.  It spurs imagination.  It gives great insight into different cultures. 

"A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind."

This year we were able to travel to Europe.  My great hope was that maybe, just maybe, A love of art might be birthed on this trip.  I mean, after all, we were going to see some of the greatest works ever created.  Everywhere you turn you find art, music, drama.

I think we were all a little fascinated with the street performers in Barcelona. They can stand very still for a very long time.  And their costumes are amazing.

I had a proud mom moment when Keagan posted a photo of the Cathedral in Barcelona with a caption of "Loving the architecture in Spain!"  Yeah..... maybe we are getting somewhere.

While in the Norte Dane de la Garde, looking at all of this splendor, Keagan was fascinated with the little boat mobiles hanging from the ceiling.  OK......That's what you see in the midst of all this?  Hmmmmm..... 

The first thing spied while in the cathedral in Pisa.... you guessed it.  The mummified body.......

The statues in Florence.  "There's a lot of naked here...."  And, yes there was a lot of naked, so I guess I give that round to him.

We all were impressed with the artwork at the Vatican.  We had a fantastic guide who had a masters in Art History and she was very good at explaining what we were seeing as well as the meaning behind it all.

In this photo, I caught Keagan listening to Bon Jovi instead of the tour guide in his headset....

But all of us enjoyed this amazing group of musicians in Dubrovnik.

All in all, I don't think that either one of my guys will love the arts as much as I do.  But, I do think they will at least have some exposure to it, and maybe they will at least appreciate it a little more.  If not, I'm sure we will have nights where we sit around and tell stories of the times when we had "forced family fun."