Art and Adventure

You know I'm not going to complain about my Mother's Day.  I had a lovely day with my two lovebugs all to myself.  But it wasn't exactly one of those 'pampering' kinds of Mother's Days, shuffling the kids from game to game, being responsible for all the meals, driving, etc.  So on Tuesday while the kids were in classes all day, I treated myself to a Mother's Day, Take 2.

I made my way to the Museum of Modern Art an hour before they open to the general public, so that I could enjoy some quiet time in the museum before it got slammed with tourists (members get in early).  I enjoyed a couple peaceful hours wandering through the new Edgar Degas exhibit with my free audioguide (via the museum's app on my phone), learning so much about monotypes.  I know I've said this before, but even if a museum charges for its audioguide - get it!  It always turns out to be an amazing lesson on the artist and/or exhibit.  As usual, had I just wandered through this show on my own with no guide, I probably would have enjoyed the work much less and sped through the exhibit much faster.  However, hearing the curator discuss the behind-the-scenes stories, learning about how Degas was known for experimenting with many different mediums of art.  I already knew some of this about Degas because Ella's favorite room in the Met is the Degas room where you can find both his sculptures of ballet dancers as well as his paintings.  But his time spent playing with ink and monotypes, manipulating them after printing them with pastels and paint, were new for me.  It was also fun to hear that he was influenced by Rembrandt's work with printing, since we have a framed print that the kids got to do when we visited Rembrandt's house this summer in Amsterdam.

After the museum I treated myself to a nice lunch and was refreshed when I picked up the kids a few hours later.

Ella had a great adventure this week as well.  She joined a homeschool field trip to do a ropes course out in Queens.

 

She loved participating in team building activities, climbing over tall walls, joining in trust falls, flying down zip-lines, and balancing on moving platforms 40 feet in the air.

She is so much braver than her mama.

"The brave do not live forever but the cautious do not live at all."