Trip to the Guggenheim

Before I had kids, I used to love to go to art museums, taking my time enjoying paintings, contemplating life, the human experience, perspective, etc.. After months of suffering from the winter-induced cabin fever, I was so excited that my family wanted to venture with me to the Big Apple to see the Guggenheim, something that I have wanted to do ever since my first NYC trip in 1997. I kind of knew that out of our 7 member family, I was the most excited about it, but I didn't yet realize how that would affect the experience.


Here is a shot that Nikolay took of the ceiling of the main rotunda, from the ground level, where they still allow photography.

Happy looking children.....soon to be bored out of their minds.
This is after I grabbed some headphones for them thinking that it would enhance their experience, in retro-spect, I should have skipped the headphones.


So, the hard part about being a mom and wanting to really enjoy something that takes concentration and relative quite in a public place is that I am their go-to girl. Being accompanied by 5 little people who need your help is not conducive to pondering life. This summer I am going to take them to some art museums closer by with much lower expectations to try to acclimatize them to museum life. When Ariel and Adriana were very small we frequented the museums on both the BYU and UofU campuses, but since that time there have been too infrequent.
Everyone was happy when we finally hit both of their gift shops at the end and everyone got to choose a postcard and Nikolay bought some other souvenirs. At home everyone put their postcards on the fridge and in the following weeks on a few occasions, I have overheard them bragging about how they went to the Guggenheim. I figure it wasn't a complete loss, because they can all pronounce Guggenheim now, and are becoming familiar with the Kandinsky and Klee postcards that are on our fridge. And I do find some quite moments in my kitchen after doing the dishes, to stare at the postcards and contemplate life, and color and form, and most of all the very human experience of raising five kids.