Renwick Gallery – Smithsonian

This time of year when the weather is a bit warmer, we love taking trips and visiting museums.  Last week we went to see the beautiful debut exhibition, “Wonder.”  The Renwick Gallery building had been closed for two years for renovations, but recently opened.  This was the first building in the United States designed expressly as an art museum. The Renwick Gallery is part of the Smithsonian; it is free to the public in Washington, D.C.

Nine artists transformed the museum with a wide variety of materials.

One room was transformed with different specimens of insects. The skull below is at least three feet (displayed on the wall).

Another artist used 3×5 cards to build huge towering mountains.  You could lay on the floor and watch the colors change across a massive hand-woven net. Other artists used embroidery thread, saplings, rubber tires and other materials.

  Here, marbles crept across the floor and up the walls. There was a massive glass-art chandelier.

And in this room the artist, John Grade, built an intricate structure based on plaster casts taken of a massive, old-grown hemlock tree in the Cascade Mountains. He used hundreds of thousands of pieces of reclaimed, old-growth cedar.

The kids really were in Wonder at this beautiful exhibit!  We had some really good talks about what they would use to build an amazing art exhibit. 🙂

This was quite different from our trip to the National Gallery a month ago to see the medieval and Renaissance art!

This exhibit compares (in beauty and inspiration!) to the gorgeous amazing Chihuly Glass Art Exhibit we saw a few years ago. Be sure to check out the Chihuly website to see if there is an exhibit near you!! It looks like in 2016 there are exhibits in Atlanta;  Wichita, Kansas;  Toronto, Ontario; and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

That’s about it for today! Happy Homeschooling and Terrific Teaching! 🙂 ~Liesl