Museum Thursday: The Umlauf Sculpture Garden

I'm not sure what my thing is with hippos lately...

Today we went to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. Because I have challenged myself to go to a different museum every Thursday this summer, I have had to really branch out and find new museums to visit. The Umlauf Sculpture Gardens, with its

"Note: The bronze sculptures in the garden have been waxed so visitors who are blind or visually impaired and others can touch the sculptures. The wax protects the bronze from being damaged by the salts and oils in exploring fingers."

seemed quite appropriate for although we are obviously not visually impaired, we are at the age of tactile learning.

Sydney really enjoyed the natural setting as well as the sculptures. It was fun to draw her attention to the way the sculptures were holding their bodies.

As a bonus, we took Mrs. Edwards with us. She called this morning and I forgot to mention to Sydney that we would be picking Mrs. Edwards up, so when we got to her house, Sydney was all ready to bail on the Umlauf and go play with Mrs. Edwards. Happily, all was resolved when she realized Mrs. Edwards was coming with us.

I had opted not to draw Sydney's attention to the more severe sculptures. I had read that Charles Umlauf had created several sculptures in response to World War II, for example, as well as several pieces that were religious in nature but were drawn to the more horrific moments of scripture. (He also did his fair share of nudes, but that didn't really bother me.)

In any case, on our first walk through the gardens, Sydney missed Crucifixion and I let her pass it by. The second time through, though, it caught her eye and she immediately recognized the gaunt figure as Christ. Her focus, though, was on the nails. She could see the nails in his feet and hands and wondered repeatedly why they didn't put one through his neck. I'm not sure why that was the question. She then needed to know if that was the real Jesus so we discussed again that it was a sculpture and repeated the story of the Resurrection to assure her that the real Jesus is in Heaven.

Later on, we found a sculpture of a mother and baby and Sydney asked if that was Mary and baby Jesus. I told her it was and she and I then got into a discussion of how I knew that (the title of the piece was Mother and Child, I read about it on-line, I knew that many artists when they paint/sculpt a nameless "mother" and "child" often refer to the Holy Family, especially if the rest of their work is religious). Aside from discussions of the sculptures, though, Sydney really got into taking her own pictures of the pieces in the garden.

And pictures of the natural setting.

After a break, something to eat and drink, though, the focus was on running around and adding to the energy of the garden.

At this time, Sydney was no longer art enthusiast, photographer extraordinaire, but instead a Powerpuff Girl on a mission to fight evil... and hot lava.

It was a lovely morning. Sydney was far more interested in the art than I had expected. The shade made the Texas heat completely bearable. Mrs. Edwards was wonderful as usual, following around one child so I could watch the other and perfectly content to wait around while children took turns running down hills and fighting bad guys.

I think my favorite moment, though, was just as we were leaving when Sydney turned to me and said, "Oh, I get it. Sculptures are statues!"

Why yes they are. Sorry to have not cleared that up at the start. Oh, well. We'll be back if for no other reason than nothing beats this setting for beautiful pictures of beautiful children, especially when your friend has an SLR and an eye for photography. Thanks, Carol!