Phoenix Art Museum

It's not like me to do so many excursions with the kids like this, but unlike the botanical garden, the art museum is high on my list of things I want to do with my kids. The Phoenix Art Museum is free on Tuesday nights from 3-7, and I knew that if I wanted to do it this summer, last Tuesday was my best chance. So off we went.

I wanted to make sure the kids were really paying attention, so before we went in I gave them one of my 30 second "let's get excited" talks. I told them that while they'd probably like most of the art we'd see, I wanted them to tell me when they found something they loved. Then I'd take a picture of them in front of it, and later we could pick their favorite to put on the blog.

Well, the very first thing we saw was this sculpture in the lobby (we haven't even gone in the main museum yet) and after gaping at it for a minute, the kids all get into their picture poses. ("Hmm," I think. "This may not go as planned.") So I take the picture:

This was the next thing we saw:

By now, I'm starting to see where this is going. The first gallery we went to was the American art gallery, and I must have taken something like 20 pictures of the kids. (This candid one is my favorite though:)

I also like this picture of them with this sculpture. They really liked it and must have walked around it a good three times before moving on.

Anyway, I didn't want to crush their enthusiasm, but at the same time, I didn't want to take pictures of the whole museum. So after a few gentle reminders that we should only take pictures of their very favorites the picture taking finally slowed down.

Now, John was in charge of taking pictures of me in front of my favorites. He was pretty excited about this. As we were walking through the American art he kept asking me why I didn't like any of the pictures. I'm not sure if he really believed that, or if he was just antsy to take a picture. Anyway, I told him I liked all of them, but didn't see my favorites yet.

Then we came to the European Art.

Now that's where John got to take lots of pictures of me. Most of them came out too dark or blurry, but that's okay. Here's one of my favorites, A Woman Reading by Antonio Rizzi.

And even though the next picture didn't turn out, I'm including it to give you an idea of how big this painting is.

We also saw a few Art Masterpiece paintings. Good old George Washington by Gilbert Stuart:

And Claude Monet's Flowering Arches. (I talked about Monet with John's second grade class two years ago.)

Once we had the European section done, I didn't care where we went or when we left (I wasn't sure what kind of stamina they'd have for an outing like this.) So I let them direct where we went after that.

We saw all those Thorne miniature rooms they have there. I just love these. The kids did too (yes we took a lot of pictures). Ben wanted to see what was at the top of the stairs (below) and every time there was a room with a door to an outside garden or something, he'd point it out. Some of these rooms are exact replicas of real rooms (I remember there was a room of one of the kings of France) and the other rooms are faithful replicas of the period (and there's quite a range too, from this art deco room to an old English farmhouse kitchen).

Next was the kids center:

Once they were done with that, we'd been there for a long time already, so I asked if they were ready to go home. "We haven't gone that way yet," John says, pointing to a long walkway bridge leading to the next gallery. I explained that led to a whole other half of the museum, thinking they wouldn't want to see so much.

I completely underestimated them. Not only did they want to go, but we ended up seeing pretty much the entire museum. We were there for three full hours. Yes, there were a few moments when I had to make Chris stop pretending to be a cheetah:








But overall they behaved and seemed to enjoy just about everything. This painting in particular caught their attention for some reason. John and Ben both looked at it for the longest time, longer than anything else we saw. It's Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist by Balthasar Beschey.









Surprisingly, I could only find one image of this online, and that one is pretty strictly copyrighted. So here's a few close up shots I took:

They wanted to know why some people have wings, so I explained what cherubs were.

I thought this floor to ceiling painting was cool - Ben did too.

This one is large too, and I just love it. It's called Nevisian Underground #1 by James Casebere. It's actually a photograph. (The link will take you to his site which I poked around on a bit. He really has some amazing photographs on there.)

Also in the Contemporary Art gallery, we saw this little beauty, Seascape #14 by Tom Wesselman.

Now, you know what I did next don't you?

That was tricky, let me tell you (and a wee bit embarrassing). Thanks to John for letting me lean on his shoulder!

There was also the Philip C. Curtis gallery. I always forget this is here, and every time I go, I have the same reaction. An "oh yeah" with mild interest. Then I get closer and by the time I've seen two or three of them, I'm in love. I love this guy's style, and how you see similar elements from one painting to the next. He especially loves painting tall, skinny guys:

That's Gift Bearers. This is Lobby (sorry about the blue glare):

The tall skinny thing amuses me for some reason.

This is Ben saying "There's a house on his head."

Yep. That's surrealism babe. Curtis was referred to as the "gentle surrealist" and I can see that. It's probably why I like his stuff better than Dali (though I do like Dali). (Oh the painting above is called Stroll in Dimension.)

Since Curtis was a local artist (not born here, but lived in Scottsdale since the 40's - he passed away in 2000), they were able to put together a little documentary about him that you can watch on a big flat screen tv. We didn't watch very much of this (it's really long) but we did watch some.

In the film, Curtis was telling a story about a particular painting. He said usually he created his paintings first, then had frames made for them. But one of this framers found a piece of furniture and made a frame out of it, and he then created a painting to fit it.

John got all excited when we saw that, because Curtis was talking about a painting John had me take a picture of just a few minutes before (this is Great Hall):

I wonder what piece of furniture it used to be?

Well, I have one last story to tell.

Even though I can never afford the stuff they sell in art museum shops, I like to look anyway. I could not believe what I found in this one:

That's right folks. Marbles.

Oh, glory be. Now why didn't I think to look here in the first place? This was more fun than Wal-Mart because you get to pick out which marbles you want. I even got a bag for myself. (Can you guess which color marble I picked out first?)

Well that was our little excursion to the art museum. Between seeing great art, finding marbles, and an unexpected foot photo opportunity, I'd say it was a success. Thanks to a cute, young couple walking by, we got a picture of all four of us in front of the entrance holding (of course) our prized marble bags.