Where art thou?

At the North Carolina Museum of Art,

that's where. :)

We've been in North Carolina for two years now

and had not visited this museum until today.

Because Scotty is so artistic

and loves art in so many forms,

I chose to go and check it out.

We walked along a very curvy, very shiny, black path

to get to the west building where the museum's permanent collection

is housed.

It looked quite slippery,

(as a matter of fact there was a sign on it that read:

"Slippery When Wet",)

and along the way we saw this odd, silver tree.

It reminded me of the Harry Potter stories,

although I can't even begin to explain why...

We saw an upside down Mona Lisa 

made out of strips of some sort of fabric I believe.

There were many, many angels,

both in statue form and in paintings.

I thought this one had really large hands.

This is a painting done by Peter Paul Rubens.

Maya remarked on how chubby this baby is.

This was an amazing cabinet with hand painted panels,

and this painting was captivating to me

with the rough, scary seas,

the threatening skies

and the ships being volleyed around on the waves.

We saw a statue of Aphrodite

and many of Rodin's sculptures like this one;

"The Kiss".

Scott and Maya in front of a dual landscape painting.

When we saw this, I asked Maya what she thought of it.

She told me, "I think that dog's gonna get it's butt kicked."

She's heard a couple of scary bird stories in her life time apparently,

and will make a fine art critic

once she's older,

don't you think?

In the American Gallery, we saw these two paintings.

When I asked the kids who these gentlemen were,

they both responded,

"Ben and George."

We're on a first name basis.

We've done a lot of studying of these amazing Americans

this past year in school.

They're like old friends now.

In the African Gallery

we saw this piece called "Congregation".

From far away they look like rocks,

but up close

you can see that they are all heads and faces.

They are made of concrete.

Kinda cool,

really kind of creepy...

but interesting all the same.

Scott, being into dragons like he is,

thought this flag was pretty cool.

Also in the African Gallery,

(and speaking of dragons,)

we saw this very heavy looking

wooden dragon mask.

I came to the conclusion today

that I am not really a modern art kind of person.

Scott looked at this painting and said,

"I could do that!"

Yes. I'm sure he could.

And if he did,

how much money do you think we could make on it?

We took some time studying this one...

it appears to be a golden man

with planes protruding out of the upper part of his body.

We still don't know what we think...

give us some more time 

and we'll let you know.

This was a blown up shot

of an old film clip.

Again,

we could do that.

I think I might frame this picture.

I'm going to title it,

"Scott and the Big Blue Thing".

I'm not sure really what it was,

this big blue thing,

but I did love the color of it.

This painting was called

"The Six Women",

and we all liked this one

because we thought it looked like 

a big tye dyed t-shirt.

This shot makes me smile...

because it reminds me of a scene in one of our favorite movies,

"Ferris Beuller's Day Off".

At this point,

the kids were getting rather tired 

of our journey through the modern art section.

(Note Maya's yawning in this picture.)

When they laid down,

Scott noticed the ceiling 

and how cool the sky lights were.

Naturally,

I took a picture of them.

I explained that the ceilings were like this throughout the building

to allow natural light in.

On our way out, Scotty saw this big, green triangle

and told me he kinda liked it.

Outside of the building,

the monkeys made some of their own art.

Rodin's "The Thinker"

contemplating in the Rodin Garden,

and Scotty

and Maya

waiting ever so patiently for me

to finish taking pictures 

so that we could go and put

some lunch into our tummies.

We had a lot of fun at 

the North Carolina Museum of Art today.

It was well worth the trip!