All the Painted Junk.

 I'm not much of a mall person. I can go once a year--or less--and that's enough.  Shopping and exercise are two of my least favorite things, so combining them is even lower on my list.  However, in El Paso lots of events happen at malls.  Why?  I have no idea.  Probably because they have air conditioning and are cheaper than big event centers.  In any case, we've found ourselves at the mall a lot recently.

A couple weeks ago I added a little daily enrichment to the girls' school day.  Every day we watch a blurb on an instrument from the orchestra, a piece of music from a baroque or classical composer, and a couple minute video about a renaissance artist. The girls' enthusiasm depends on the day and whether they've had breakfast yet.

Thanks to social media, the inspiration for most of our adventures, I heard about a Sistine Chapel exhibit coming to a local mall.  I bought tickets and bundled some grumbling girls into the van.  They were going to get some fine art exposure even if they didn't want it.

The exhibit wasn't very big, but it was awesome. It began with a video about Michelangelo's life and the chapel itself, and his colorful, love/hate relationship with the pope who commissioned the ceiling. Massive copies of the frescos were arranged with videos and placards explaining the subject, history, and symbolism of each painting. I was surprised by how much they had retained from our enrichment videos; we discussed foreshortening, chiaroscuro, perspective, realism, symbolism of placement and colors, the choice of characters depicted, how frescos were made, tempera vs oil paint, and more.  They particularly liked the depiction of the Last Judgment, one of the busiest and most detailed of the frescos. 

They were less enthused about the other, more indecent exposures in the art, but we added an impromptu human anatomy lecture and also had a good laugh.

Sorry, guys.  You know it looks ridiculous.

Anyway, it was one of our favorite trips we've done here.  I'm hoping that more of these traveling exhibits come through.  As incredible as it would be to go to the actual Sistine Chapel, I think that we got a better view of the art at this exhibit, where we could walk up to the paintings instead of squinting at them from 60 feet below.

Highly recommend.  Check your local mall today.  You never know what kind of junk they’ll have on display.