The Art Museum

Took the kiddos on a field trip to the Art Museum last week. It's been awhile since I've been to the Art Museum, thought we were about due for a trip, since we no longer need strollers and wipes, etc. I did remember my last trip to the Art Museum, where we encountered the GIANT piles of painted, knotted, piled nylon rope in the entry. These are piles bigger than furniture, some bigger than automobiles, uniformly knotted and coiled and stacked into massive structures, with little signs that say "Please Do Not Touch".

You're kidding me, right?! These things are indestructible and randomly placed in the ENTRYWAY, so that you have to walk around and through them, but we can't touch them?! They are made of rope, like from Lowes rope, and coated with seriously heavy coats of shellac..."Kids, don't touch the giant piles of painted rope. It's delicate."

But I digress. This time the entry was still in a state of un-pack, we thought. We were wrong. There were these frames, the size of patio doors, that had unfinished strips of plywood on the vertical sides and between the plywood there were different types of curtains sticking out. The frames were at all random angles and there was a second tier on top, that had shards of mirror sticking out of the edges. We could walk through them, and OF COURSE, not touch them. It was stupid and unattractive.

Of course, the descriptive card off to the side went on about how the different curtains and positions made the viewer feel different things, blah, blah, blah. Since my friends are just as shallow as I am, we could only feel endangered by the big shards of mirror sticking out of the edges of the unfinished plywood. Actually, the unfinished plywood made me think of my kitchen, but mostly all I could think about was that someone was actually able to get paid for such a piece of rubbish.

And then I remembered my favorite exhibit ever at the Art Museum...the unravelling cacti. I think that's when I realized how very shallow and uncultured I am. A man had paid some South American women to knit coverings for plastic cacti. These cacti were set up in a large diorama. Each knitted cacti had a yarn coming off it, running up to a powered spindle on the ceiling and at random times, the spindles would spring to life and unravel some yarn from the pieces. The "art" of this exhibit, was that it was always "changing" because it would be unravelled at random times, making it different. Huh? I've got stuff at my house that changes every time I look at it--the ring in the toilet, the stacks of laundry, even the litter boxes--perhaps I need to market myself more...

The "artist" didn't even do the knitting. Head banging on desk* Still don't get it.

We found our way to the clothing area, where we last saw women's outfits from each decade since the turn of the century, only to be disappointed--and shocked--at the display of coture from the 60's on, that included a swimsuit that was a brief attached to two suspenders that joined at the navel area AND NOTHING ELSE. The mannequin had other parts that weren't covered, fortunately the one boy with us was busy with the "artwork" that was simply a poorly-lit HOLE IN THE WALL, that you viewed from across the room.

I'm sure this description does little to explain the circumstances. There were some terrific things there and I am, for the most part, glad to take the kids. I just wish I could go without the whole Emperor's New Clothes feeling.