Where’s my van Gogh?

I’m sharing a way I enjoyed art with my daughter and her friends when they were little.

Not many 4-year-olds own a van Gogh, but my daughter Emily did. She held it carefully in one of her hands and fanned herself with it from time to time while searching upstairs, downstairs and in every hallway of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Emily was looking for a painting that matched her van Gogh postcard from the gift shop. Sometimes she would invite one of her friends to come along with us on the adventure. When we arrived, the girls would choose their favorite card from the back wall where the gift shop kept postcards of Cincinnati-owned art. Before purchasing, we’d ask the cashier to call to make sure neither of the works of art were in storage, before we spent the morning looking for them.

We stayed together, but I remained silent, allowing the girls to ask guards for directions and to make mistakes. After ending up in the same room 3 times, Emily FINALLY announced, “We’ve been in this room before! There’s that painting of the man in the black hat again! Let’s ask a guard for directions!” They eventually arrived at the proper room and seeing Emily’s van Gogh on the wall, shared a “touchdown-type moment!” The girls took a few minutes to appreciate the skinny trees and van Gogh’s thick swirly paint, but having covered a lot of territory in their search, we soon headed to Graeter’s ice cream in Clifton for our traditional treat. A perfect end to a perfect morning.

Emily is twenty-one now and has wonderful memories of searching for her paintings. This summer we had a day off together and went to the museum to see our old friends hanging on the walls. As we passed the marble lion with his nose worn off, Emily remembered that he was Paige’s lion, guarding that same cavernous hall. And we saw Kayla’s flower painting with numerous bugs still hidden within the petals. We visited those darling girls in the paneled room with their short haircuts and blue dresses. We hated to leave the old man in the black hat, but we were hungry and oddly enough, we both had a craving for Graeter’s mint chocolate chip.