Week 1, Part 2: Art Institute of Chicago

On Saturday afternoon, Mark freed me up to walk down to the Art Institute. I walked around there open-mouthed and astonished at the artwork--all these things I have seen in books, here before me! Roman statues! Medieval Bible! Renaissance armor! Impressionist paintings and lots of them! A room for corralling your children with computers, blocks, puzzles, and books! An exhibit about fashion and the Impressionists awaited also, right past American Gothic. Honestly, what astonished me most was the breadth and depth of creativity of all these artists. It reminded me that this is one of the things it means to be created in God's image--we want to make stuff that is meaningful, or beautiful, or otherwise interesting. We can't help it. 

Sunday afternoon, I brought Noelle down to share it with her. I decided that there were two ways to do this--according to her interests and attention span, or according to mine. One of these ways leads to death.  :) 

We decided that she could look at whatever caught her fancy and I could take her picture with anything she liked in particular. Katie--just let her enjoy it and don't worry about adding in any other content. (This is a difficult temptation for nerds like me.)

We stopped out front for the cool lions.

  

She really liked the Degas dancers. 

To this one, she said, "Ooo! Of course!" and posed without further comment.

Her favorite part, however, was the kids' education room, with artsy computer games and a wall full of artsy books. 

She enjoyed the paperweight collection.

She was also a fan of the miniature rooms collection--like perfectly scaled doll houses of a variety of times and places. We were both impressed how even the view out of the windows of the rooms was attended to.

This cool medieval Gospel caught my eye again. We talked briefly about how they decorated the outside of it with jewels and carved ivory because they thought the book was a treasure--so they wanted it to look like a treasure. So here it is sitting in a glass case.
Noelle's response: "Well, if it's a treasure then why don't they READ IT?!" She is her father's daughter--the day before I had this same conversation with him "Ah, yes, the age-old debate between art historians and literature scholars..." he said.

Besides the kids' room, Noelle's favorite part was the Fashion and Impressionists special exhibit because there were period dresses displayed alongside the artwork featuring them. I found the paintings WAY more interesting than she did, but we still had a great time.
"Noelle, isn't this painting beautiful?"
 "Oh yes, and where's another dress?"

We had a great mommy-daughter date out of this excursion. Holding hands waiting for the Red Line subway train to arrive; walking together, seeing what art caught her fancy and why; watching her bounce from piece to piece; trying to share a little bit about why I liked certain pieces--for me, at least, it makes a fond memory. I'm thankful for it.