Touring the Chrysler Museum (Norfolk - Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring the Chrysler Museum (Norfolk – Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Norfolk (Virginia) has a gem museum called the Chrysler Museum.  It has free days for families to visit, which I made use of.  I put in a few dollars, though, when I could as admission fee.

Laurent, Florence, and I went to this darling place as often as we could.  On one of our visits the museum had Impressionist paintings on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Dutch paintings from the National Gallery of Art.

The Impressionist paintings came from Boston and showed scenes of merry-go-rounds by terrace cafes in Paris.  Florence liked those. 

I took her out for walks and field trips in Paris and always paid for her to go on the merry-go-rounds, called ménèges, at La Défense in Puteaux, Ménilmontant, and at the medieval theme park at Puy du Fou (near Les Sables d’Olonne in the Vendée on the Atlantic Ocean).

The Rembrandt portrait sitters’ identities were unknown.  Neither of the sitters with their rigid lips struck me as very interesting people despite their ruffled finery, showing their wealth.

Looking at those portraits did make me want to check out some books about Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Vermeer at the library, though.  I paid for some to be obtained from a university through inter-library loan on Vermeer. 

I eventually took out Simon Schama’s book about Rembrandt and thought that was the last the word on the subject for several centuries.  Maybe I would indulge in books about Dutch and Flemish painting while Florence was in France for the summer.

Winslow Homer painted my favorite piece in the museum called The Song of the Lark.  In this painting, a man holds a scythe and looks off in the distance at the sunset.  I stopped and put a hand up to my ear and asked, “Do you hear the lark?”

Laurent’s favorite works in the museum were the dainty, Tiffany glass lamps, especially the ones that looked like individual flowers with a bulb inside where the stamen would have been.

The art nouveau furniture collection from the late 19^th century made me wish I were rich enough to buy some of it.

Two artists from Nancy (France) had works in the museum’s decorative arts section – the French artists Majorelle and Gallé.  My favorite piece used two kinds of wood to show inlaid ducks on a bombé chest.  The burnished polish made it look soft as silk.

It is unfortunate that Art Nouveau faded away.  It was expensive to make and hard to industrialize, which may explain why it is gone.  (Laurent and I later visited the Art Nouveau Museum in Nancy – France and both agreed that Art Nouveau is lovely and almost a sedative to look at for its undulating beauty.)

I planned to come back to the Chrysler Museum and make a safari art game with items to look for like:

-mummies

-ducks

-pretty plates

-glass bottles (there is a large collection of glass at the Chrysler Museum from ancient Roman times to the present)

-porcelain

The mid-sized collection at the Chrysler Museum meant that styles varied from room to room, giving visitors a complete picture of art through the ages.

After a visit to an art museum, I always asked Florence to make art projects.  I made an art box for her, which included starter items such as:

-tape

-sidewalk chalk

-crayons

-pastels

-colored pencils

-different-colored paper

-glue

-scissors – used with supervision if the child is small

-simple drawing books using geometric shapes for flowers, insects, faces, and human figures

-origami instruction book and origami paper

The ship family association raised money to purchase art kits for children at our holiday party at the end of the year.  These are nice gifts, but you have to do some planning to put them together, because you have to order merchandise that has to produced in some cases.  

If suppliers know you have an order for 300 children and you are paying in advance with cash, you can get your supplies and have them all wrapped without a huge fuss.

In Monterey County (California), Michael’s and JoAnn Fabrics carry all of those items above.  I bought a portable file cabinet at Office Depot to store these items in using different kinds of plastic bags.  I use this kit now and stashed some magic trick kits in there, too.

Savvy Moms are actually kind of Peter Pans for buying stuff for grandkids.  J

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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