Sunday, March 20 and Monday March 21, 2011

Well, Papa and Grandma left for Rome yesterday morning.

The backpackers off to trek Rome!

We hung around for the morning. We were supposed to clean, but that didn't really happen. We decided
to go for a walk in the afternoon - Daddy wanted to see the jewelery shops on the Ponte Vecchio, but only about 1/3 of them were open, so we walked up the via Tournabuoni. It's one of the major fancy shopping streets. We knew that nothing was going to be open but it was fun to look in the windows.

Walking down the street.

We were going to sit in one of the squares to have a snack, but it was a little too breezy, so we walked home. We ate dinner in, and that was that.

Daddy making dinner.

On our walk we passed the Palazzo Strozzi, which is now a modern art museum. The only one in Florence, I believe. An exhibit of Picasso, Dali, and Miro just opened on March 12. This morning I was looking online to see if it was open today (lots of museums and galleries are closed on Mondays) and they were AND they had all this family friendly stuff! Yay!

Checking out the courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi.

So, we packed up the kids and headed over there. Unfortunately, most of the activities for kids are on the weekends, but we were able to request a "Picasso's Cube". It was a leather box (an Il Bisonte leather box, no less!) with a bunch of stuff inside to help the kids explore the art.

The Picasso Cube!

  Unfortunately, the instructions inside were all in Italian, but I was able to get the gist of most of it. Depending on the room, it had the kids focus on a different aspect of the art and had some different activities for different age groups. The first activity had colours on three different palates, and the kids had to pick which painting matched the colours on each palette. Then it talked about how these early Modernists didn't necessarily use the colours they saw, but what they felt best portrayed the meaning of the picture.

Each room also had "bite sized" pieces of the paintings on the sheet that the kids had to find the "real" picture.

The next room was all portraits, and told the kids that you could tell a lot about the person sitting in the portrait by what was included in the background, colours, body language, facial expression, etc. Included in the box was a sketching kit and the kids were to sketch what would be included in their self portrait that would tell about them.

The next room was all about still life. It talked about how artists painted things that had meaning to them, or were everyday objects that important in day to day life. It had a bag containing some things (a small tablecloth, a small coffee grinder, a pipe - the same things as in some of the pictures) and the kids were to create their own still life and sketch it if they wanted. Before this was also a bunch of pictures by Miro that were all of his home in Catalonia. Home was very important to all three painters.

The next room was all about using your other senses. I had the most trouble translating these instructions. There was a bag of lavender in the box and it talked about what senses do you use to explore this object. I think it also talked about using other senses while painting, like smelling the paint, etc, as well as getting clues from the paintings about what senses the artists were trying to "provoke" the viewer to use. Or something like that...

Did you know that Picasso made costumes for the Ballet Russe's ballet "Parade"? Me neither! They had some of them there. It was supposed to be a Cubist ballet, so they were Cubist costumes! They had a big felt board with felt shapes for the kids to make their own Cubist costumes.

Katie

Grace

Hannah's dog

Liam's Soldier

Abby's purple tower

Right before we were done, there was another interactive thing. There were postcards with a very primitive "house" shape on it and coloured pencils. It wasked you to draw or write what "home" means to you, then add your postcard to those already hanging in the room.

The kids had a blast. It was so thoughtfully done. The modern art was a nice change from all the Renaissance art we've been immersed in. We had a really fun morning.


We came home and had some quiet time, then Chris went out to look at a pen shop, and I told the kids that I'd take them to the park we discovered one street over, but the gate was locked when we got there. As we were standing there, two older men came over and asked if we wanted to look inside and I said  we wanted to play, so he unlocked the gate for us (he was, of course speaking Italian and I was speaking English!)

For kids who were "so tired from walking so much", it was no problem for them all to run for literally the next hour!!

The girls are riding their horses over in that corner.

Katie picked me a bunch of daisies.

Papa and Grandma just walked in from Rome and they are TIRED!!! I'm looking forward to hearing about their adventure.

I think we will do dinner in again tonight. I'm not sure the weary travelers want to go out again!