A Morning at the Walker

The Baby Lotus Bud and I packed into the Jeep for a morning at an art gallery: The Walker Art Center. We met another Mommy and Baby at the museum and spent a couple hours strolling through the first floor of exhibits.

My local library has free passes that can be checked out for a week at a time. There are so many art galleries, museums, and zoos in this program (The Museum Adventure Pass) that I'm sure the summer is going to be full of great outings and activities. I plan to do one a week and it's the free passes that make these excursions possible. Today's trip would have cost me and the other mommy $10 each. The babies got free admission.



This Adventure Pass dealio is awesome because for places like the Walker you need to go back several times just to see the bulk of their regular collections.

We spent a lot of time at the Benches & Binoculars exhibit where there were 90 paintings grouped closely together on two walls. All the paintings were from the Walker's collection. It was great to see them all at once. I walked out of the exhibit when the other mommy had to leave, then wandered back in, not ready to leave at that time. I swear it seemed like they had switched up the paintings in those few minutes I was out of the room.

There is so much to gaze upon that I see a new painting each time. Another good thing about this installation is that we get a chance to see pairings of paintings that probably were never shown together before. For example, an enormous Chuck Close, a painter whose work looks like black and white photography, right next to several smaller canvases full of bright colors and abstract forms; or a Georgia O'Keeffe alongside an Andy Warhol.

For some reason it reminded me a lot of our hike out to the Great Gallery in Utah. It was a seven-mile hike that the Big D and I took on our 14 year anniversary. The Park Service supplied binoculars at the site. We spent a couple of hours eating lunch and peering through the binoculars at the ancient artwork.

I wish I had been able to take some pictures with the interactive art installations at the Walker. There were some great ones with mirrored surfaces where it would have been interesting to capture our own reflections. Another one was some sort of shadow installation with the color image projected back onto the screen. It was psychedelic vision of shadow, faded 3D imagery and real life all in one little darkened space.



The Baby Lotus Bud did great, gazing with wide eyes at all the art installations. She didn't fall asleep, I'm sure because there was so much to look at. I hope I can provide these sorts of experiences throughout her whole life.

We passed by the Minneapolis Sculpture Gardens, which strangely I've never been to.



We'll have to save that adventure for another day. As soon as we left the Art Center, the Baby Lotus Bud fell asleep, hopefully dreaming dreams full of canvas, paint, sculpture.