The Akron Art Museum

Great job, Akron Art Museum folks!

I had the pleasure of visiting the museum for the first time and it is truly wonderful. Highlights:

1. The building itself is fantastic. So much cooler now that it's completed than I thought it would be when it was being built. More specifically, the wing over the old museum looked like a mistake at first, but it makes sense now.

2. Rene Magritte. My favorite artist and my hometown museum has a piece of his. Wow. I was pretty thrilled to find the painting there but was admittedly disappointed that none of the museum literature touts this piece. I'm not the only Magritte fan, am I? This is, of course, not meant to disparage the wonderful work of the museum or to downplay the rest of the collection, but I would have thought that having a Magritte in house would be a bigger deal than it is.

(Obviously I'm reading too much into this, but I'm sensitive and defensive regards Magritte after a shocking number of people, artists even, look at me blankly and say, "Who?" when Magritte comes up.)

3. The keychain. We signed on for a family membership and apparently the good folks at the art museum know how to get to me. I love trinkets and so forth. Miniatures. Especially free ones. Mary even gave me hers. She's the best.

4. Warhol. I like Warhol more because I'm a big VU fan, but still...

5. Can't recall the name, but the series of photographs of "Tiny" is stunning and heartbreaking but somehow...something in there gives me hope for some reason. I don't know. Walking along the display, though, I cycled through so many emotions. Every emotion, actually.

6. Staff. Everyone was so cool and nice. My little guy was being pretty vocal and rather than glaring or shushing, the docents came by and talked to him. Very cool.


That's about all I've got for now. I'm so proud of Akron, though, for making this happen.