Kids and Art
Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Picture Fund, 37.375. Photograph ©2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A rainy Saturday in the city calls for a bit of creativity on the part of the parents. Luckily in a dynamic place like Tokyo, it’s not all that difficult.
What we decided on was the National Art Center, Tokyo because they have a Renoir exhibit that is only here for a few more weeks. Both Marc and I are
huge fans of Impressionist art. It felt really crazy to be looking at European art in the middle of an Asian capital, but the paintings were so beautifully hung with such obvious care to their order and organization. The explanations were clear and interesting – and many of them were in English. It was more English than I’ve seen at an exhibit in Japan ever.
The kids were great. They read the explanations; they enjoyed the paintings; and they were interested in the section of the exhibit where the curators had taken both x-rays and infrared photos of the paintings so they could study their structure and composition and color.
At first they did not want to go but Marc and I were persistent. We took them out to dim sum for lunch and asked them to behave themselves so that we could all enjoy the exhibit. We made them part of the decision to go see the paintings. And of course, there was a tiny bit of bribery involved. We all love dim sum on a Saturday for lunch.
Even with all that, I’m still so pleased with the way the kids behaved and how they handled themselves. It was a wonderful way to spend a rainy Saturday.
Aimee Weinstein, Tokyo Writer 
Your post reminded me of taking my boys to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. My youngest at the time, David, was captivated by Dutch genre painter Jan Steen’s “The Dancing Couple.” (David liked to dance as we walked in Old Town Alexandria, much to his older brother’s annoyance.) Whenever we would visit the gallery’s west wing, David would search out the oil painting. I later bought a print of the painting and David still enjoys looking at it. He would often mimic the couple’s dance, which always made me smile.