close your eyes and cross the sea...

Today we went to the National Gallery of Art for their summer series, Stories in Art.

We met up with Ms. Marjorie who greeted us with a happy 'Bonjour' and after closing our eyes and counting to 3 we were on the streets of Paris, but only for a moment before we left for the french countryside.  We entered a garden and ran into the gardener hard at work, Claude Monet.   Phoebe sat quietly and listened to a story about a little girl visiting Claude Monet in his garden. 

Ms. Marjorie took the kids to sit in front of Monet's The Artist's Garden at Vetheuil.  She described to them how to look at a painting; left to right, top to bottom, then crazy eyes, and asked them what they saw.  I watched this interaction with envy, wishing that I was a wee one looking at this painting for the first time.  

Then Phoebe got to do a 'painting' of her own with oil pastels.  After the art project we meandered through the galleries to find the actual Monet painting that P had just colored, The Japanese Footbridge.  She only seemed a little interested in seeing it and was mostly just appeasing me, so we headed for the car.  Though we exited through the underground concourse between the east and west buildings; this might have been Phoebe's favorite part of the whole outing.  She stood on the moving walkway stunned by the lights exclaiming that it looked like 'space out', which I think means outer space.  :)