Joseph, Emily, Abby and I met up with Grandma and Grandpa Decker and Stephie for a visit to the NC Museum of Art today. The purpose of our visit was to see the Matisse, Picasso and School of Paris exhibition.
The collection is on loan from a Maryland museum who was provided the collection by Etta and Coletta (?) Cone — of Moses Cone Memorial Park “fame” in the blue ridge mountains of NC.
In any case, it was a wonderful display, including sculptures from Rodin and at least one Monet. Matisse had done a hand drawing of Etta and a self-portrait of himself. Picasso did one of her sister. There were lots of other artists showcased too. While there were probably only 100 or less in this exhibit, the sisters collected and subsequently donated over 3000 pieces to the Maryland museum.
I took the girls with me (and Joseph) to give Ron a break, knowing I’d have Grandma and Grandpa’s help (and Steph’s too!). Joseph wanted to go to see the art. We made today an educational lesson, too. Joseph enjoyed it until I told him the story of Van Gogh though then got in a funk about the ear thing.
But, we persisted and we’d go up to a painting and talk about what it looked like to us and make up stories about why the painter painted it. One question Joseph posed was “why are all the ladies naked?” Perfectly reasonable and it looked like Matisse and Picasso were in competition for the number of nudes they created! 😉
While we waited for our table in the museum’s restaurant, we went through the Egyptian section where Joseph related stories of the Egyptian pharoahs to us. Of course, they were all made up, but he did study that in school, so some of it was right on the money. He and Mom went to the African Art area too.
Lunch was delicious… or at least the appetizer breads were. Joseph had the most interesting food — wild boar sausage. Yup! Joseph has eaten wild boar! To put it into his terms, he’s now eaten the food that is keeping the survivors of LOST alive on the island. 😉 If you don’t know what that means, check out ABC on Wednesday’s at 8:00 pm US ET.
And, of course, throughout this day’s event, the girls got stares, comments, oohs, aahs, touches, smiles, “oh my goodness, twins”, “are they twins?”, “two babies!” comments galore. Grandpa eat’s it up!