I love fine art. I love the history of it. I love the way it soothes. I don’t paint or draw myself, so I really appreciate that there are others out there who do. I used to go to art museums and alternate through being bored and being uncomfortable. Once I faced the fact that there are some art pieces I simply don’t like and that’s ok, things improved. I began seeking out the pieces that blanketed me with the greatest amount of peace and inspiration. Those are the pieces I love. I have since discovered my favorite types of art and have cultivated my taste to a classified system. Now I love art museums. And I am ok walking right past the pieces deemed by critics as the greats to discover the quaint and tranquil.
When we bring art into our home, I do the same. I have purchased dozen of postcard art books, sifted through them, keeping my favorites and discarding the rest. I love coffee table art books and have no qualms about taking these books apart. I don’t particularly like paying full price for them, however, so most of the art books I have purchased (and dissected) have been library books sale specials. My home is full of framed pieces I originally clipped out of such books. This being the case, you can imagine my delight as I walked into my new town’s library, was handed a “teacher card,” good for 5 free library book-sale books each month, and coming home with 3 exceptional coffee table art books. That was such a good day.
I spent the new few hours skimming all the details of Vermeer and his Dutch art predecessors who set the stage for him to become the genius he is. Instead of clipping out pieces to hang on the walls, however, I just clipped out the pieces I didn’t particularly like or didn’t particularly want the children to be looking at over and over again, and I threw those pages away. The book is at my home, I own it: I have license to do whatever I want with it.
You may be a little uncomfortable with this, and I understand. Before my experience as an educational designer, I would have been shocked at the idea. But there is a practice I learned that can be a powerful educational tool. It’s a rule: anything that does not add to learning, takes away from it. As an educational designer, I had to virtually strip away all of the accessory material to discover the meat and potatoes of the lesson and teach only that. Deeply, thoroughly. Add only what would improve that learning.
So that is why, last weekend, I recklessly, fearless ripped pages of Louvre and Metropolitan Museum of Art masterpieces and tossed them in the garbage. I am left with a book full of delightful masterpieces any member of our family can enjoyed without supervision for hours on end. I have the greatest respect for the museums’ curators, but I am curating for a different audience in my home, with entirely different objectives. Motherhood is a sacred trust. I have felt to teach my children peace, love of beauty, and pursuit of truth in the context of goodness, not just to equally represent all sides, time periods, and perspectives. If I am true to what delights me, that delight will come through to my children. They may select different pieces of art to love when they grow up—I hope they do! Just thought I’d share my dirty secret of book desecration so perhaps you’d feel the permission to do the same in some element of your parental charge. Happy parenting!
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