Our school year is almost over, we're going to have our 4th quarter exams next week actually. All through out the year, we went to field trips, planned and unplanned. Yesterday, we went to another unplanned field trip in the metro. I've been seeing posts about the Metropolitan Museum and how it's just nearby, and I've been wanting to bring my daughter there one of these days. A fellow homeschooler shared a post saying there's an activity for kids so I went ahead and signed us up. The event was called Into the Wild, A Family Adventure in Abstraction. In my excitement, I forgot to ask if my daughter wanted to go, but it's a good thing she loves going to museum. I figured she'll enjoy it.
That she did. The gallery on display right now is Wild: Women Abstractionists in Nature. The keywords are Women, abstract, and nature. All the artworks on display were all made by women all over the world. This is in celebration to Women's month. The artworks were all about abstract art. I thought my daughter would now appreciate the pieces, but it's a good thing we've been doing a lot of art appreciation lately, she's been exposed to several artworks and she's done quite a few herself. The last keyword was nature. The artists expressed the beauty of nature through their abstract works.
We arrived early at the venue. After we signed up and created our name cards, my daughter and I wandered around while waiting for all the other participants. She was so excited to see all the artworks in the exhibit. I had to drag her back to the venue because we were being called already. She still wants to view the paintings but we had to get back. It's a good thing the first part of the activity was a short guided tour to the exhibit.
I have never experienced a guided tour on a museum before. It is so much better to take a look at the artwork and have someone give you a backstory on how or why the artwork was created. You get to look at the painting at a whole new light.
There were quite a few kids during the event. I let her linger with all the other children, but her attention was all focused on the artworks. She listened carefully to the tour guide and was eager to ask questions. I stayed at the back because I wanted her to enjoy the experience on her own. We looked at a handful of paintings, listened to the backstory behind each one, analyzed and observed the form, lines, colors, and shapes. The guided tour gave us a deeper understanding about the artworks.
Once the tour was over, we headed back to the venue where there were 4 tables. I thought those would be our seats during the entire event. It turned out those were stations for the different activities. There's the keychain making activity, the Trading card making, still life/realism/abstract activity, and the expressionism. These activities were very much aligned with our regular art activities at home, except that we do not focus on the abstraction. This is one of the few times my daughter would create abstract.
After the event, we went out to have lunch. I thought that was the end of it. I was ready to go home after we had a little bit of book shopping. But the little learner has other plans. She wanted to take a closer look at all the paintings. And I mean ALL the paintings in the exhibit. There were 34 paintings in the Wild exhibit. There is another exhibit going on and she also wanted to see all of those too.
For each painting she looks at, she would tell me what she sees, how she feels about it. She would also analyze some of the details that she found. While looking at the paintings, she would say out loud the things she wonders about it. Like what kind of brush was used, or what paint the artist used for the colors. She observed how some artists used materials like jeans, ropes, light, etc. We had a little game where we would guess the title of the artwork and check to see if we got it right. I thought she'd be tired by artwork #15 but she went on and on right to the last display.
Needless to say I was exhausted. When I saw a bench, I glued myself in there and let her roam around because I was dead tired. My feet were killing me already. Of course I couldn't deny her the joy she was feeling from seeing all those artworks. And this was a happy tired feeling so I was okay with it.
The organizers of the Into the Wild, A Family Adventure in Abstraction event there at Metropolitan Museum did a great job. The interns that assisted us were extra nice to my little one too. The Metropolitan Museum of Manila is free admission until the end of April. Come May, there will be an entrance fee of Php350. My daughter wants to go back there, maybe we will. We are looking forward to the next exhibitions that will be on display this coming May.
