Nassau County Museum of Art

Every day artdaily.org sends me an email with press releases from museums around the country. Last week, the press release for Facing Destiny: Children in European Portraiture (1500-1900) at the Nassau County Museum of Art crossed my screen. The considered-becoming-a-child-scholar part of me perked right up. The part of me that didn't want to see the Long Island Rail Road this weekend for love or money was sold when google maps declared that the museum is all of 20 minutes from Massapequa. Who needs to go into the city for a museum fix anyway? Particuarly when the art museum in question is a former Frick mansion.

"Facing Destiny" was a mixed bag. The paintings were chosen from the collection of the Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober in Majorca, Spain and were of widely varying quality. Some were masterly rendered portraits, others were stiff exercises in painting clothes (and plonking heads on top of them). But those stiff exercises did make an important point, these children were their clothes. Clothing communicated power, prestige, and status. For chidren who would one day rule, it was imperative to start cloaking them in the symbols of that power as early on as possible.

It was nice to see the progression through the centuries, how as the clothing changed, the idea of childhood was changing too. Sure, these aristocratic kids were still all tarted up, but it became clear that they were children, not miniature adults. The Dutch portraits, of course, did the best job of this. The Dutch were decades, if not more, ahead of their French, Spanish, and English counterparts in their conception of childhood. While the rest of Europe, still thought of children as inherently morally depraved, the Dutch in as early as the 17th century understood children as morally malleable creatures who would thrive in a loving and supportive atmosphere.

In a corridor between galleries, there were pictures of famous Americans when they were young. The snapshots could have been of any middle class, American child in the mid-20th century. The point was that American children are often born in anonymity and become great. Whereas, European children were born into their greatness. A nice gesture, but just a smidge too didactic for my taste.

I wasn't wild about the exhibition, but the problem really wasn't the exhibition. The problem was me. I've done a lot of reading about childhood. During my thesis days, Philippe Aries and I spent some serious quality time together. So, while it was fun to look at the paintings, I didn't really learn or discover anything new. I crave a sense of novelty and discovery in my museum-going adventures.

So, it makes a lot of sense that while I went to the Museum for "Facing Destiny," I was actually way more excited by the unexpected sculpture on the grounds (although, to be fair, they wouldn't have been unexpected if I had read the website thoroughly). Some were hideously appealing, like this hydra--I really wished I could have seen it in action; it has sprinklers in its mouths:


Others were cerebrally pleasing. I was completely taken by Alberto Bertoldi's "Redbank 31-Nassau Variation." From a distance it looked like a series of rectangles plunked semi-artfully on the ground.


But when looking through the rectangles, the sculpture came to life. It was like looking into two mirrors set opposite each other and seeing into infinity.


But even better was satisfying the urge to walk to the end of infinity. If one could go through the looking glasses to the very end, this is what it must look like:


There was also a collection of surreal creatures on the Museum's grounds, "Silla Casa Para Palomas (Chair, House for Doves)" by Alejandro Colunga. I was delighted by the unexpected juxtapositions. It was like walking through a frozen dream landscape or a children's book where Dr. Seuss meets Dali meets L. Frank Baum.



Clearly, the Nassau County Museum of Art merits another visit. I didn't even get to the formal gardens (designed by Ogden Codman and later redesigned by Marian Coffin!).