School Vacation and a trip to the MFA

Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist
Religious - Saints
Sandro Botticelli, Italian (Florentine), 1444 or 1445–1510 (From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

School vacation began today and the weather was raw and damp. The weather thing is beginning to get annoying here for us, beautiful during the week and crappy on the weekends/vacations. Okay, so enough whining. The seventh graders were learning about art from the Renaissance and had a big test last week. Bub expressed interest in Art history and I said, "Hey, I've never been to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston". Which is pretty sad considering I grew up 7 miles outside of Boston. So we decided that a road trip during vacation week would involve the museum. So my friend and her daughter who is also in 7th grade joined us today on our jaunt into culture. We called it our road trip with the the kids who still like us ( both of us also have 2 boys each in high school ). Lunch and ice cream out was on the agenda, which we had at the Prudential Center, the kids were great fun to have along and got along great. It truly is amazing how wonderful my kids can be away from each other.

Okay, so the Museum was big and we only saw most of the second floor. The amusing, comical part of the day was that it coincided with an Art in Bloom exhibit which was from 4/22 - 4/25. By the fourth room, we finally asked two women with the appropriate tour book just what the heck was going on? Since we would stand by a floral arrangement ( 1/room) and then get surrounded by a bunch of older ladies, included some with red hats...LOL. They explained that garden clubs were given an art piece to depict in a floral arrangement. Hmm, interesting concept, but not worth paying extra to follow a tour guide around the museum as they explained colors, shapes, blah, blah in context of the artwork. However, we then had some fun trying figure out if the floral arrangements were good or not until we would become surrounded by matronly ladies and the dreaded tour guide with her note cards, tapping her foot, as she awaited our moving away from the arrangements.

We came away with a lot of observations from our day of art:
1. Baby Jesus was pretty pudgy and looked like a European, with either brown or blonde hair, blue or brown eyes
2. Saw a lot of naked people, which according to a comment written in a book, "scared, some people". LOL
3. Artists in the 1400's - 1600's did a better job with shading of materials than with proportion of hands/feet/fingers
4. Women with naked busts had pretty interesting shapes
5. My friend and I would have made excellent art models back then
6. Red was dominant color
7. We promised to never let the other become a "red hat" when we became old
8. We need to go back and do the first floor for the American Art

Overall, it was a fun day spent with excellent company. We kept telling the two kids that they were our favorite children since they weren't fifteen yet. I would like to make a yearly trip to the Museum, it is definitely a "must see" in Boston. Plus, like everything else in Boston, within walking distance of most everything else!