Elizabeth Fishel shares about how she is teaching her granddaughter to appreciate museums.
I recently read about museum visitors causing damage by backing into artwork to take selfies! I get it: a selfie announces, “This piece of art blew my mind, and I want to share it.” All well and good, but aren’t museums for training your eyes forward and engaging with the art, not just using it for a digital backdrop?
I grew up in Manhattan near the famous Museum Mile, a storied stretch of Fifth Avenue that’s home to at least 10 first-rate museums. When other families were hiking or biking, ours was strolling from one museum to the next.
Early on, my mother, a ceramic artist herself, taught my sister and me the difference between a Monet and a Manet and why Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” was an anti-war statement. When I became a mother to two spirited boys, I began a museum-outing Mother’s Day tradition, the one day of the year they couldn’t protest.
As I’ve gotten older, our temples of art have become almost religious spaces, places to find meaning and joy, like being mesmerized by Ruth Asawa’s wire-sculptures or Wayne Thiebaud’s painted pastries, both on view in San Francisco this summer. Hoping to carry on the family tradition, my husband and I introduced our then three-year-old granddaughter to the glorious sculpture garden at the DeYoung Museum along with a cookie at the café.