Font ResizeThe first thing you see when you enter the Weisman Art Museum is Roy Lichtenstein's massive painting of a laughing red-haired girl outlined in thick black lines.
My 8-year-old son peered up at it and said, "It looks like Spiderman or Batman."
"You mean it looks like a comic book?" I asked.
"Yeah."
And, of course, he was right on. Kids are critics without even knowing it.
I love looking at art with my children. They see things afresh and aren't afraid to say what they think.
Last week, I took my three children to the Weisman, which houses the University of Minnesota's collection. I enjoy the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Walker Art Center. But sometimes I'm in the mood for a snack, not a buffet. And I discovered the Weisman is a great way to satisfy a small craving for art. It's also a great place to take kids.
We approached the museum from the west, driving along the Washington Avenue Bridge, where we got the best view of the stainless-steel façade perched above the Mississippi River.
"It looks like a crazy castle," my 6-year-old said, which is just how Time magazine described it when it opened 15 years ago, "... a wizard's castle in some 23rd-century fairy tale."
The Weisman was the first art museum in the United States designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry. The jumble of curves, cubes and planes served as a trial run for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which he built a few years later and which drew
We parked in the ramp in the basement and rode elevators to the main floor. The children immediately gravitated to the end of a long, airy gallery and a painting the size of one of the walls in their room.
As we walked closer, we could see it depicted an industrial farm with thousands of chickens in cages stacked on either side of an aisle that seemed to extend forever. The boys walked right up to it and gawked. It looked 3-D, they said. They wanted to touch it.
"It seems like you're going to walk into it," said the 6-year-old, as he tested his theory by walking away from and back toward the painting.
He didn't realize it, but he was looking at a perfect example of one-point perspective and a vanishing point. I read from the placard that said it was by artist Doug Argue and the painting creates a "sense of empathy with the caged and overcrowded chickens."
"You're supposed to feel sorry for them," I said.
"I don't," said the 8-year-old breezily.
I learned my lesson. Who wants to be told what to think?
In the next gallery, I followed the advice of a brochure I had picked up at the front desk and didn't read the information on the placards to the kids. We saw images from the university's collection of American 20th-century artists, including Georgia O'Keeffe's red "Oriental Poppies." We saw photographs I recognized from history books, including Lewis Hines' portraits of immigrants at Ellis Island and Walker Evans' portrait of a sharecropper woman taken during the Depression, both part of an exhibit on the meaning of citizenship.
The children's favorite piece was neither a photo nor a painting but an installation by Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz called "Pedicord Apts." You walk into what looks like a hallway of a seedy boarding house, complete with dirty green carpet, a musty smell and duct tape over a frosted glass window. As you lean close to each of the six closed doors that line the hall, a soundtrack emanates from behind.
My 6-year-old was initially convinced there were rooms behind the doors.
"Somebody is crying!" he called out, with his ear pressed against the dark-stained wood and his hand on the doorknob. We eavesdropped on a party, a televised ballgame, a barking dog and several other mysterious activities before I tired of it and dragged them away.
We also viewed several temporary exhibits that explored political themes. We walked through a room of old posters printed to build public support for World War I and II.
For example, one poster showed four GIs in a jeep bouncing down a bumpy road alongside the slogan: "Save rubber. Check your tires now. They've got more important places to go than you."
My 8-year-old son, who has absorbed the current national obsession with presidential politics, wanted to spend more time in the exhibit "Hindsight Is Always 20/20."
The artist, R. Luke DuBois, analyzed the State of the Union speeches given by American presidents and printed a poster for each speech showing the most frequent word in big black letters at the top. Other words appear below in order of frequency in the form of an optometrist's eye chart.
The results are intriguing. Can you sum up an administration in one word? My 8-year-old knew just enough history to recognize why certain words popped to the top. He spotted the word "emancipation" and knew it had to be Lincoln. He had a good guess as to why George W. Bush said "terror" so many times.
But most words baffled him, and the exhibit provided a fun way to learn a bit of history. Why was "gentlemen" uttered so often by George Washington? What did "barrels" have to do with Gerald Ford?
We spent a little more than an hour at the Weisman, and while we hit every room, we left much to explore during a return visit.
And soon, there will be even more to see. Last year, the museum unveiled Gehry's design for three new wings, which will double the gallery space and add a cafe jutting off toward the Washington Avenue Bridge. Fundraising is nearly complete, and the goal is to open by 2011.
I guess even crazy castles need to remodel.
Maja Beckstrom can be reached mbeckstrom@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5295.
family outings / the scoop
What: Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
Where: 333 E. River Road, Minneapolis (University of Minnesota)
Information: 612-625-9641, weisman.umn.edu
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Closed Mondays and all major holidays.
Cost: Free. (Attached parking ramp is $3 per hour.)
Target audience: Preschoolers and older
Crowd pleaser: Check out Doug Argue's untitled chicken painting and "Pedicord Apts.," an installation of an apartment building hallway with lifelike sounds on the other side of the doors. Artists Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz created this piece.
Avoid: Art fatigue. Leave before your kids max out.
Tip: Bring a snack to eat on the small second-floor terrace overlooking the Mississippi River. To make a day of it, walk a half-mile to the Bell Museum of Natural History (bellmuseum.org), stroll the university campus (maps at umn.edu/twincities/maps) or head to nearby Dinkytown (dinkytownminneapolis.com), where you can grab brunch at the iconic Al's Breakfast, ice cream at Annie's Parlor or Chinese food at Shuang Cheng.
