Ian is Art

we went to the BMA today, where there's an exhibit you should see - except you don't see it, exactly, you sit in it and carry it around and climb on it (and leave muddy footprints on it) and, if you happen to be there when Ian is there, you HEAR it.

We very much enjoyed this installation - Franz West's The Ego and the Id, an enormous looping steel thing reminiscent of doodles, cursive writing, gum stuck under tables, and djembes. It's also mounted on a plywood platform, hollow underneath, which encouraged Ian to bring the noise, bring the funk in a big way, along with the climbing and the drumming and the whatnot it entailed.

There was lots more art to see, but we contented ourselves with a few 18th c paintings with animals in them, and AT LEAST AN HOUR OF TORTURE IN THE MUSEUM SHOP, which my child much prefers to actual art, since you can look at art all day long and not come home with any plastic animals at all! CAN YOU IMAGINE! THE INJUSTICE!

(we got out with 3 plastic dragons.) (yes, because I caved.)

In the interest of fairness, I want to point out that I, too, LOVE a museum shop, and sometimes find them more interesting than the art on display for the same reason - you can get something and take it home, have a relationship with it. There were at least 5 or 6 things I would love to have bought for myself, were we feeling flush and I had no one but my selfish self to spend money on.

Anyway, this art is more fun than a playground. We're going to go back a million times before this exhibit ends.

I've posted a bunch more BMA pics on my Flickr page.