Cultural Reformation

Homeschooling is fun.

By J. Wesley ⋅ June 3, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Not the most inspired title I’ve written, but it does capture today’s mood. Monday is free day at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Given the size of Sarasota, it is a fantastic art museum, with over 10,000 objects, wonderful grounds filled with banyan trees, a circus museum, and a Venetian Gothic mansion. If you ever get to Florida, Sarasota is definitely worth a visit (and worth a free cup of coffee if you let me know you’re in town!)

So the boys and I did a museum crawl today. We spent most of our time in the Renaissance section discussing everything from Rubens and his defense of the eucharist to the Byzantine influences on Medieval art to the gendering of Italian city states. And about why that one saint always has arrows sticking out of him. We also checked out the contemporary art section, and defined a negative definition of art — it’s only art if we can’t do it ourselves. Here are a few of our non-Modern favorites:

The Blue Madonna by Carlo Dolci

The Sirens by Edward Burne-Jones

Esther before Ahasuerus by Antonio Palma