Three pandas, some rockets and a bit of Modern Art
I love family trips . . . driving trips . . . long-distance family driving trips. My wife thinks I’m nuts. The kids aren’t sure yet.
Last week was spring vacation and the littlest one has always wanted to meet Tai Shan, the young Panda born at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. He watched a movie on the web from the panda cam in Mei Xiang’s pen of Tai Shan being born as did the rest of us. We’ve all become quite the baby panda fans around here so it was time to go meet him. That’s 10 hours in a car. I was psyched, the rest less so. We did the trip, had some fun, had some fits, and all-in-all survived in good fashion. And Yeah, Tai Shan is pretty amazing.
Washington DC is simply a fantastic city. There are innumerable museums, parks, monuments, and all sorts of activities for an active, inquisitive family. We did a lot, but the most unlikely place we visited was the east wing … not of the white house, but of the National Gallery.
We’d pretty much done the Air and Space museum, oohing and aahing over rockets, spaceships, airplanes, and more rockets and spaceships. The boys were in boy heaven! Heck, so was I! Of course you can’t get through everything in the museum in even a week, but there’s only so much we could absorb at one visit. The boys were satiated, so we asked mom what she wanted to do next. Oops.
The only place that mom wanted to see before we left Washington was something called the east wing of somewhere. Never really did get the name right before we got there. As we walked across the mall, stopping to watch a way-too-serious adult kickball game and take pictures in front of the Capitol building, she told me we were headed for the east wing of the National Gallery, the modern art repository. MODERN ART. The only modern art I thought I needed to know about was 7 white painted panels I’d seen at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Smithsonian's museum of international modern and contemporary art many years before. I know I’ve painted walls that were more intriguing than those panels and I’d subsequently sworn off most modern art. Of course I was wrong. I often am.
We studied some fantastic mobiles both very large and quite small and a great Roy Lichtenstein of Donald Duck catching his own shorts with a fishing rod. There were also a Warhol Campbell’s soup can painting, and a great Jackson Pollock. Upstairs was a room full of very interesting Picasso’s and we just missed the Matisse exhibit that had closed for the day. The boys already knew these artists’ names and had seen their works in books Karen had showed them. It was fascinating for me to watch my kids see with their own eyes what they had previously only seen in books and for that matter on the web. It was a great experience for all of us.
Going to Washington last week reminded me that there’s only one way to see the Tai Shans, Andy Warhols, Washington Monuments, and White House’s of the country. Just Go. Take the trip. They’re waiting for you.
And what does this have to do with the Red Elephant Gallery you ask? Not much other than whatever you order from us was created by an artist and will look and feel even better in person. Don’t wait, order today.
Last week was spring vacation and the littlest one has always wanted to meet Tai Shan, the young Panda born at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. He watched a movie on the web from the panda cam in Mei Xiang’s pen of Tai Shan being born as did the rest of us. We’ve all become quite the baby panda fans around here so it was time to go meet him. That’s 10 hours in a car. I was psyched, the rest less so. We did the trip, had some fun, had some fits, and all-in-all survived in good fashion. And Yeah, Tai Shan is pretty amazing.
Washington DC is simply a fantastic city. There are innumerable museums, parks, monuments, and all sorts of activities for an active, inquisitive family. We did a lot, but the most unlikely place we visited was the east wing … not of the white house, but of the National Gallery.
We’d pretty much done the Air and Space museum, oohing and aahing over rockets, spaceships, airplanes, and more rockets and spaceships. The boys were in boy heaven! Heck, so was I! Of course you can’t get through everything in the museum in even a week, but there’s only so much we could absorb at one visit. The boys were satiated, so we asked mom what she wanted to do next. Oops.
The only place that mom wanted to see before we left Washington was something called the east wing of somewhere. Never really did get the name right before we got there. As we walked across the mall, stopping to watch a way-too-serious adult kickball game and take pictures in front of the Capitol building, she told me we were headed for the east wing of the National Gallery, the modern art repository. MODERN ART. The only modern art I thought I needed to know about was 7 white painted panels I’d seen at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Smithsonian's museum of international modern and contemporary art many years before. I know I’ve painted walls that were more intriguing than those panels and I’d subsequently sworn off most modern art. Of course I was wrong. I often am.
We studied some fantastic mobiles both very large and quite small and a great Roy Lichtenstein of Donald Duck catching his own shorts with a fishing rod. There were also a Warhol Campbell’s soup can painting, and a great Jackson Pollock. Upstairs was a room full of very interesting Picasso’s and we just missed the Matisse exhibit that had closed for the day. The boys already knew these artists’ names and had seen their works in books Karen had showed them. It was fascinating for me to watch my kids see with their own eyes what they had previously only seen in books and for that matter on the web. It was a great experience for all of us.
Going to Washington last week reminded me that there’s only one way to see the Tai Shans, Andy Warhols, Washington Monuments, and White House’s of the country. Just Go. Take the trip. They’re waiting for you.
And what does this have to do with the Red Elephant Gallery you ask? Not much other than whatever you order from us was created by an artist and will look and feel even better in person. Don’t wait, order today.
posted by RedElephantGallery | 9:45 AM
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