The Littlest Docent

A visit to an art museum is a very different experience with a 3-year-old. The rhythm is entirely changed. Rather than the slow, even, reverent amble of a well-socialized adult, you get lots of stops and starts--a quick trot through three rooms, then 25 minutes in the next. The perspective on what is and is not of interest also gets altered quite a bit. Stairs, doors, and benches are at least as important as the putative art on display, particularly since they're interactive in a way that most of the art is not. And as you can imagine, more attention has to be spent on not running into, getting in the way of, or otherwise molesting other museum-goers.

My mom was visiting us this weekend, and so she and I and Cassie all went into the city together. My mom and I have a long history of going to art museums together, and Cassie and I have sort of become regulars at Local City Museum of Art, but this was our first time all together. I was a little disappointed with how it went, because Cassie was so revved up by the presence of Grandma Sal that she wasn't as interested in the art as she usually is. Even when it's just the two of us, there's plenty of stair-climbing and bench-lying and snack-eating and hallway-zooming, but we also get these great little moments of shared contemplation and discussion. Is that lady in the marble sculpture sleeping or dead? Which stained glass window is your favorite? Is the chimera in the ceiling mural flying or falling? Why is that little statue of the monk crying, and why can't we see his face? How did that man get those boo-boos on his hands? (Incidentally, Pete and I really do try to avoid baby-talk for most things, but somehow "boo-boo" snuck into our vocabulary, and is now pretty well entrenched.) There was less of that kind of thing this time, with Cassie so excited.

We still had a good time, though. Some highlights:

- Eating grapes out on in the sunny courtyard, on a stone bench decorated with carved grapes.

- Fifteen minutes hanging out while Cassie sprawled and read out the spelling of nearly every geographical feature on a stone floor map of the ancient Near East, upside-down. "M, E, D, I, T, E, R, R..." She then traced the course of the rivers with her finger, making a happy little rr-rrt rr-rrt sound, and then pretended to splash through all the bodies of water with Grandma Sal. (Fortunately, that particular room was fairly sparsely populated, so I think our whole-body map enjoyment was not too disruptive.)

- Sitting and looking at Rembrandts, as my mom observed that even the greatest artists seem always to get the hands wrong somehow, and Cassie sat quietly, wholly absorbed for the moment in her copy of "The Caboose Who Got Loose."

- Watching Cassie run up to a green, Mondrian-esque geometric abstraction as if it were an old friend. (She always has seemed more taken with abstract than figurative art, which is a little counterintuitive to me.)

- Holding Cassie's hand as we went into a dark room ("it's too spooky!") that housed a small collection of of Asian sculptures, each in its own little pool of light, and then holding her close as we looked at one particularly lovely and serene dark gray Buddha with what looked like a moonstone in his forehead.

- Noticing, as we sat in the museum cafe, that Cassie was suddenly having trouble with a piece of something, and getting my hand under her mouth in time to catch the entirety of a little glorp of vomit that then emerged. (It made me feel briefly like one of those unflappable veteran moms, as I discreetly deposited the smelly mess into a napkin, and then got the napkin into a plastic grocery bag (carried for the purpose of wrapping a dirty diaper), and tied it off, all without anyone besides my mom noticing that anything was amiss.)

- Watching Cassie pick out post cards in the museum shop--quick, avid, incredibly decisive, as if she already had a mental list of which ones she wanted. Yes, no, yes, yes, no, no, no, yes.

My mom said she might actually like the art museum experience better as led by a 3-year-old. You don't feel obligated to be interested in everything. It's also more kinetic--with all the trips up and down stairs and whatnot, definitely a better work-out.