The Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin

This month, insted of showcasing her own work, Maddie would like to share with you her experiance going to her very first art museum!

On Saturday the 14th last month Maddie and her Daddy visited the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin. It’s a little closer than the Cleveland Museum of Art,  and parking is easier.

As we opened the doors  Maddie let out a soft “Woooooow!”. Paintings and sculpture everywhere. We went through the diffrent wings, and up the stairs and saw pices that were hundreds of years old. We talked about what she imagined  and what she could see in the abstracts. We looked at the self portraits in the upstairs display and thought about the artists who created them. We stood on the balcony and looked down at the main floor and all the pieces that we found there.

Maddie had some favorites, she found a painting of a castle (a church actually) which was just what she had been looking for. On the main floor, as we walked in, a 200 year old dragon greeted us. She found one room with a great many paintings of Jesus, and would tell me the stories behind those paintings. I paticularly liked the bronze sculpture of the fall of Icarus – but that’s a whole diffrent story.

For a small museum in a small college town,  Allen Memorial Art Museum has a very impressive collection. I spoke to my friend Mike and he, like me, had never been there. I can’t believe we’ve been neglecting to take advantage of this resource – right in our back yard! Well, no more. I want to head back some time when I can spend more time looking at things (Maddie was well behaved, but naturally has the short attention span of a six-year old). Possibly I’ll head out during the Black River Theatre Festival I go to every summer. It’s right next door.

In the mean time, I think I need to create some art of my own for Violent Blue! See you next week!

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