We love staying active and
seeking out new
experiences as a family in budget - friendly ways, so our trip to the Shedd started with a stop at our local
library to pick up a Kids Museum Passport.
For although this reluctant resolution may simply be motivated by the mundane tragedy of my own private aging, it has become increasingly clear to me in recent years that much of my current thinking about art was shaped rather decisively (if very indirectly) by that filial
experience, and much of the conjecture I am
seeking to flesh out in this essay is directly influenced by my first encounters with art — encounters which first took place and shape in front of my father's modest but well - balanced
library, in his ateliers (he must have moved house every two years or so for a whole damned decade), at the opening receptions for the many group shows he was in, throughout the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, in villages, towns and cities scattered across the Flemish plains.