Minneapolis Instutite of Art Family day
Every 2nd Sunday of the month, MIA has a family day with various activities for the kids. Every month they have a different theme. I took kids to the three previous days and can't wait to go there in September. What a wonderful place to spend time with kids, find interesting art pieces, make art and hangout together.
In August, the theme of the day was insects and outdoors. Kids made bugs out of clay, they made origami bug with real neon light and we were doing a scavenger hunt all over the museum. After finding all paintings, kids got plastic toy bugs of their choice.
One of the pictures that we had to find was this one:
Still Life With Fruits Foliage And Insects By Abraham Mignon 1669.
I love this picture!!! The colors, the craft and the philosophy. From the first look, fruits look great, sweet and delicious but if you look closer, they are all rotten.
The museum explanation said:
"Still lifes often carried symbolic meanings for their original Dutch viewers. Here, the crowded display of fruit and insects testifies to the bounty of nature. The artist's virtuoso technique also reveals his desire to vie with the natural world and briefly halt time's passage by fixing these objects in paint. The sheer variety of natural organisms still fascinates. But the fruit has begun to rot, and the once-mighty oak tree shows signs of blight. The stone in the foreground has fallen from a once-perfect building, and the arch in the right background crumbles. Butterflies and caterpillars, traditional symbols of transience, also allude to the impermanence of earthly things."
I thought it was very existential picture. It was my favorite out of the scavenger hunt.
Scavenger hunters :)
Making bugs out of clay. Work in progress :)
Bugs in the bag.
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