I like art.
Art is pretty.
Art is fun.
Art makes you think about stuff and how you see the world.
I also like the question of what makes art art.
I mean what really makes one thing into museum worthy art and another thing relegated to an Etsy listing or a state fair craft. You know what I mean? Quilts don't end up in art museums. And now that I think about it, neither do many tapestries. I have never seen a tapestry in a museum even though they are beautiful pieces that take years and a lot of skill to create. I don't know why they wouldn't be considered art.
What makes art art? I said those words a lot on my most recent trip to the Tacoma Art Museum. Most everything was there I didn't disagree with the idea that it was art but I wasn't entirely sure what made that art when similar pieces I had seen were not. The answer is usually "an artist" and I have yet to be tapped with the magical fairy wand of legitimacy that makes me into an artist.
That's what makes art cool. It is a display of what the artists sees and how he/she interacts with the world and it inspires questions and our own musings of how to create art and show the world how we see it.
If you like that sort of thing the Tacoma Art Museum is a pretty cool spot.
Compared to places like the Louvre or literally any other famous art museum you can think of, The Tacoma Art Museum is pretty small. I rather enjoy that. It is hard to experience and digest a lot of art at once so the Tacoma Art Museum has just enough to enjoy for a whole afternoon, or even a whole day, but not so much that you have to rush through barely see a lot of it. Instead you have the chance to sit with a piece you particularly enjoy and still make your way through the whole place.
The other thing that I found super cool about the Tacoma Art Museum was the way they chose to address kids. Every kid is an artist, magic wand of legitimacy or not, and they allow kids to be that. The Tacoma Art Museum has a wing with several classrooms where kids get to play and create their own art. I like that. I like the idea of encouraging kids to create their own artwork and express how they see the world and I like that an art museum would create space for that.
Over all, that Tacoma Art Museum is a cool spot and it would be super easy to explore in an afternoon or on a Saturday. If that is the sort of thing you are into.
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