Over vacation, Todd and I took Marley on her first trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. Like most six-year-old girls, she loves coloring, drawing, and doodling, and she spends a lot of time at the kitchen table working on original pieces. I was inspired to make the trip earlier in the month, though, when I really thought about how she loves working on a pattern of lines and colors and shapes just as much as she loves drawing a rainbow or a fairy or a portrait of her happy-faced, bespectacled family. I thought she'd be excited to see giant canvases of abstract art. I really did.
At the last minute, when we dropped Rudy off for an extended playdate with Emma and Jackson so that we could head in, Marley decided that she no longer wanted to go. She protested that she'd be
bored just looking at pictures, and that her mommy and daddy were
so boring, too. But once our plan had been set in motion, Todd and I were prepared to power through. We packed one of her sketch books and hit the road, attempting to calm and appease her on the way into the city with a stop at Dunkin' Donuts for her favorite: a bacon, egg, and cheese croissant. That helped.
When I look back at our pictures, it's clear that Marley's black and gray dress was the perfect art museum ensemble. She could be wearing something very similar in twenty years while sipping a pinot noir in one of the museum's fancier restaurants. Typical stylish Beanie. I, of course, was wearing jeans with an Old Navy tunic, along with a sad attempt at accessorizing with an Old Navy scarf.
We started with the museum's collection of jewelry, and Marley audibly oohed and ached while peering into the cases of sparkling gems. As we moved through the galleries, Marley got more excited and starting pulling out her book to copied some of the artwork, including Piet Mondrain's "Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red," which Beanie said she recognized from her kindergarten art teacher's lesson on primary colors. Todd and I couldn't help feeling proud of the kid on the bench beside us as she attracted the attention of several other museum-goers while rummaging through her pencil bag for the right Crayola Twistable to complete her copy.
It turned out to be a late night, and we probably looked at barely a tenth of the museum's collection, but I know that next time we suggest a visit, our pipsqueak-y artist will be more enthusiastic right from the start. It will probably be longer, though, before we bring Rudy Toot along. She's still too much of a wild card, and I think we'll practice at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art at the other end of the state before we bring that kid into a room of nearly priceless art to see what happens.
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