Kindergarten Visits MoMA

“Mommy, do you like Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio?” Derek asked me the other day.  Growing up under a Chinese education system that associated art with consistency and visible reality, my husband and I have long suspected that Derek is a natural modern artist—in fact, all the children in his nursery school and kindergarten class are!  Haven’t you seen the paintings in the Kindergarten Middle Room?  Form and abstraction are intrinsic to them, and they possess the expressive qualities of freshness and innocence of vision.  In the eyes of this highly biased parent, these paintings possess compositions that resemble a Jackson Pollock and the color palettes of a Vincent Van Gogh.  Just as I thought my son was going to start quoting Pablo Picasso, “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up,” Derek declared excitedly, “We are going to MoMA to see The Red Studio!”

The museum was bustling and crowded on the day of the trip.  But the boys soon found their way by partnering and lining up behind Ms. Paula Stuttman from the museum’s education department.  They were in collective high gear and generating the kind of energy that, if harnessed, could power all of Manhattan.  Just as we walked into the elevator, Ms. Loree announced, “Elevator silence.”  Just like flipping a switch, the boys became silent—still holding hands and with smiles on their faces.  One visitor in the elevator looked on with evident amazement.

The first stop was The Starry Night by Van Gogh.  The boys were immediately drawn to the swirling clouds and the luminescent stars.  Sitting in front of the painting, they raised their hands and took turn to offer opinions on what the massive dark structure was:  “It looks like a church,” said one.  “It is a tree,” volunteered another.  The boys also had the opportunity to meet Ms. Loree’s husband Mark Williams who works at the museum.  They were fascinated by the story of how The Starry Night traveled on a big airplane by itself, protected by armed guards and through the hands of the crew (including Mark’s) made its way back onto the wall of the museum.  Ms. Stuttman then led the boys to Matisse’s The Red Studio.  Through the prism of the color red, the otherwise invisible world of the emotions of the spirit was revealed to the children, who reasoned that Matisse must have felt warm and happy in his studio.  They enjoyed Picasso’s Three Musicians, and appeared to be particularly fond of the dog.  The boys already seemed to be well versed in art terms such as cubism, and wowed the visitors around them with their sophisticated comments.  They gravitated towards Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and bathed in its light and color.  They used their geometry vocabulary to describe Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie and related the painting to Broadway’s hustle and bustle.  But it was Jackson Pollock’s One (Number 31) that captured their imagination in particular.  With Ms. Loree demonstrating the Jackson Pollock dance moves, the boys tried to trace the flows of the intense colors to the motion of his body.

On the ride home, as the rain picked up its pace and our bus navigated the midtown Manhattan traffic, I murmured to myself, “Miserable weather.”  Derek turned around, leaned on me and said, “Mommy, do you know that this is the first rainy day of the school year?  The first time it rained when we came to school this morning!”  Staring out the window he proclaimed with enthusiasm, “The rain is dancing!”  What a different perspective!  For him, the rain was a source of delight and another reason for celebration.  I looked at his smile and recalled Fyodor Dostoevsky’s words of wisdom:  “The soul is healed by being with children.”  Encounters like that day intensify, clarify, and expand what we know and experience, more importantly—reveal to us what it means to be human.