This family!
*****
But let me back up really quick...
When we were rounding up the kids to go to the museum (a trip we planned earlier in the week, pending Miriam feeling alright), they all obediently got ready and filed into the car. Zoë even made sandwiches and Benjamin sliced up some apples so we could have a picnic lunch ready. So, we head out towards the entrance to the freeway and Rachel suddenly goes, "Wait a minute! Why does the GPS say 28 minutes?!"
"Because the museum is only half an hour away..." Andrew said. "Welcome to leaving in the middle of the day when there's no traffic."
"I'll say!" Rachel exclaimed. "I can't believe it's only a half hour away!"
"It's always been a half hour away," Andrew said. "It's just sometimes longer if if we get stuck in traffic..."
"Yeah! But when I go it's always at least an hour!"
"When you go...where?"
"To the art museum on campus!"
"Oh, so we're going to the High Museum," Andrew said. "Not to Athens."
"Oh!" Rachel said. "I thought we were going to the art museum at UGA! This makes more sense! I was like What magical way is this that is only a half hour?!"
Unfortunately, Athens is still an hour (or more) away (depending on traffic). But kudos to Rachel for simply getting ready and getting in the car without being clear on where we were going. We could have been taking her anywhere!
Soon we were coming up to the parking garage (one of Phoebe's favourite things).
"Hey, Phoebe!" Andrew said, "We're going to go into a parking garage!"
"Yay!" she cheered from the backseat. "Parking adodge!"
Phoebe metathesizes garage a bit (just like she does "birthday abloons").
*****
The parking lot was suspiciously full for mid-day on a Wednesday. We only realized our mistake when we saw the signs proclaiming "Access for All!" and "Free admission!" outside the museum. Apparently this is a program running through 2027—so if you want to visit the museum for free, plan on the third Wednesday of the month!
The girl at the ticket counter scanned our pass and then happily said, "And since it's an 'Access for All' Wednesday you don't even have to use any of your guest passes today!"
And I was like, "Guest passes...?"
And she was like, "Yeah...for your guests..."
And I was like, "But I thought the family pass covers our whole family..."
That's one of the reason we have a pass to the museum—it's one of few places that allows us to have just one family pass for a family of our size (most places would make us get multiple passes to cover all the kids).
The lady at the counter eyeballed our (large) party.
"It does..." she said hesitantly (I don't know why because it was a free day anyway).
"Then we wouldn't need any guest passes," I said. "These children are all ours."
"Oh," she said. "Well..."
"The pass covers all children 17 and under," the supervisor came over to clarify.
"Good to know," I said. "And...all my children are 17 and under."
"Then you're good to go!" the supervisor said.
We were already good to go because admission was free!
But—in fairness—Rachel turns 18 at the end of the week, so it's a good thing we went this week. I suppose it's okay to have her be kicked off our pass because she won't be around much anyway (sniff, sniff).
Andrew wanted to go to the museum because they had an exhibit called Data-verse by Ryoji Ikeda. I'm not sure what he was expecting. I thought the "stills" were quite interesting while the main display was an absolute assault on our eyeballs—I'm not even kidding! There were so many—too many—strobe effects. I felt so bad for the security guards who had to stand in those dark rooms with flashing lights—holy cow! And then those strobe rooms spat us into a large open space with three big screens that were just flashing data at us. I began to wonder if the point of the exhibit was to really drive home the point that we are so overburdened with data that it becomes useless noise. Some of it was interesting, I guess...but mostly I felt like my eyes were on fire and my brain couldn't process the rapidly switching images.
Phoebe eventually whispered to Andrew, "Are we going to just stay in this room forever?"
And that was our cue to leave (thank you, Phoebe).
Here we are after, looking at a print that had a million tiny bits of data on it. Interesting...in an AI-could-have-done-this way (or any bit of older computer programming whatever).
There was an interesting db poem, which I suppose was a theme of the exhibit since the first line of the poem is "dark - bright." The poem has been developed quite a bit further from the first instance I found online (from 2000).
Anyway, I didn't super love that exhibit, but it was kind of cool that another exhibit was featuring the artwork of a children's author-illustrator. Andrew was like, "Hey! We did my thing—now we can do your thing!" It worked out well.
"My" exhibit was Faith Ringgold: Seeing Children. I've read a few of Ringgold's books—but apparently not enough of them. Her artwork certainly is thought provoking and the exhibit was very welcoming for children. They had these "old fashioned" telephones about where the children could sit and listen to a telling of a story (read by elementary students in the Atlanta area) or to a discussion about one of the books (by children in the Atlanta area).
This section had a recording of Faith Ringgold reading one of her stories (Tar Beach) projected on the ceiling so you had to recline and look up at the starry "sky" to take in the story, as if you were also visiting Tar Beach (a rooftop patio) with Cassie (the girl from the story).
Here's Cassie—as a life-sized doll:
This was interesting to me, having read Bernstein's Racial innocence: Performing American childhood from slavery to Civil Rights this summer, wherein she talks extensively about dolls and how they act as "scriptive things," asking (mostly) children to use them in certain ways. I've been in the archives at UGA looking at some dolls from the Civil War era for some research and...so it was interesting to see Cassie here, sitting on this vibrant chair, staring up at a star-studded sky with so many children walking through the exhibit.
Ringgold's artwork is provocative. Like this piece that has such a hopeful message really looks quite terrifying to me. True, the people are burning their bundles of hate and prejudice and so forth...but it looks rather scary to me.
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Not too unlike this picture of KKK riding through the night:
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It was good to check that off our list—our last museum trip with Rachel-as-a-child!
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I dunno...I might have gone with a more cheerful look for the "every good thing starts with a dream" spread. But I'm not the artist.
From there we went downstairs to see an exhibit called Beasts (Exrom Legae), which explored how he used animals metaphorically to talk about oppression and things like that. They had a table with papers inviting guests to contribute to a gallery of animals that could represent certain ideas (like peace or fear).
Here are what Benjamin (a dove for peace), Zoë (a fox, which makes her feel joyful and a swan for peace), Alexander (a wasp for fear), and I (a joro, which didn't ask to be here, yet which is classified as "invasive," and is thriving in spite of everything) did:
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There was also a photography exhibit in this same area that was pretty neat. Miriam and I liked Astrid Reischwitz's Spin Club Tapestry series, where she incorporated needlework with photographs.
At this point Phoebe desperately needed a stop in the "children's area" (as she kept repeatedly saying). This was her favourite part of the museum. She said she felt like it was a puzzle "shrine" from Zelda that she needed to figure out—she had a lot of fun playing in there! She loved walking through those hanging...things...
...and just climbing all over everything.
Then we went into the create-space and did some creating and colour play. It's always fun to add to this mobile:
Today's task was to create a scene for the green chicken that lives in the museum.
I put the chicken by the pyramids. Alexander put the chicken about to get smashed by a big wave:
Benjamin turned his into...what...Steve riding on a lava-powered chicken? Or something:
Here's Rachel working on her scene:
We were particularly impressed by this Van Gough chicken:
And thought this roasting chicken was pretty funny:
I don't know who did them, but their artwork was delightful. Andrew noted that there are many people in the world more artistic than we are, but I think that every artistic practice improves one's artistic ability, making our efforts just as important.
And then we went downstairs and saw some sketches by Kim Chong Hak, and let me tell you—he did some pretty unimpressive sketches. So I can be happy with my unimpressive sketches as well. I mean, I really did like Kim Chong Hak's large mural paintings—they were vibrant and beautiful—but his sketches were....meh. I understand that's just a method for getting ideas down so they don't have to beautiful but...I mean, it did make me feel a little better about my sketching (not that my sketches have ever turned into something fabulous in the end, like Kim Chong Hak seems to do...but still).
Sketches...
Sketches...
Final copy...
We liked this series that moved from through the seasons, showing the progression (and digression) of a squash vine:
His work was arranged in seasons. Winter was through a doorway, so we got to see glimpses of winter as we walked through other seasons.
Here's everyone admiring the long winter scene:
Benjamin liked this winter scene (and there was a room showing a video/time lapse of Kim Chong Hak creating this piece, which was cool):
Here's Miriam looking at a picture:
Interspersed among the paintings was a collection of "marriage geese." Evidently it's traditional to gift a goose to a newly married couple to wish them longevity in their marriage. I thought it was interesting that these were labeled "artist once known" rather than "artist unknown" or something else. I wonder if they use that wording in all their descriptions or whether it was specifically worded for this exhibit. It certainly made me wonder about the creator of each wooden goose (there were many throughout the exhibit, which spanned two floors).
Here's Benjamin next to a particularly large marriage goose:
Here's Rachel pointing to a painting of azaleas (because she went through a phase one year where she both really liked azaleas and also could never recognize them so she would be like, "Oh! I really like that plant! What is it?" and we'd all be like, "It's an azalea!!!"):
We all really enjoyed this exhibit.
It was bright and colourful and simply an absolute delight:
We ended this exhibit on the very top floor of the museum and instead of taking the elevator down we walked down (and down and down and down) the ramp:
It was good to check that off our list—our last museum trip with Rachel-as-a-child!
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