Making art fun

Sometimes you just get lucky.  That is what happened at the Akron Art Museum today.

This morning when we were looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon, I found a children's scavenger hunt on the Akron Art Museum's website.  We printed it out and went in search of ten paintings and sculptures at the museum.  The museum lobby - which is the modern addition to a old, historical brick building that once was the museum - is bright and airy with walls of windows that let in natural light.  You are only allowed to use your camera here, so I didn't get any photos in the galleries. But Grace had a fantastic time searching all the rooms for the real artwork that was depicted on the color copy she carried with her.  She checked each one off when we found it and even did a little math to let us know how many we still had to find.

In each room, after we looked at everything, each of us told which piece of art we liked best and why.  My favorite of the entire museum was one called "Man Eating Trees".  It was certainly memorable because of the striking - almost scary image - but also because the artist used tar for paint.  It is about how humans are destroying our forests and he used tar because it comes from the sap of pine trees.

Just before we were about to leave several dancers from Verb Ballet came out of the theater on the first floor with animal costumes on.  The children we immediately drawn to them, of course.  They were so nice, offering to look at the art with the kids.  At one point, the dancers and some of the kids gravitated to giant Conectagons where they built their own sculpture together.

Although we were hungry, we stayed for their performance which was an interactive ballet where they used ballons and invited the children up on stage to participate.   Grace LOVED it!  It was so cool that she recognized some of the music. When we got home Grace went right up to her room, found the classical CD,  put it into the CD player, and tried out the dances she watched.  We didn't know there would be a dance performance today to add to the artwork...we just got lucky!