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Before they climb out of the gold Saturn, Shawn Hevel has a short talk with five-year-old Bryce about acceptable behavior in the Columbia Museum of Art.
Inside Bryce shows he doesn’t need much instruction. He finds what he likes and then is ready to “go to another aisle.”
Unlike like him — and many museum visitors — his parents don’t rush. Although, as their guide, I’m pushing them onward on a Friday evening.
Tiffany has never been to the museum; Shawn came with a group from work and got a tour from a museum guide.
“She was awesome,” he says.
She must have been, because he knows a lot about the Renaissance paintings, such as what kind of paint was used and the development of perspective.
Tiffany sits down in front of a nativity scene and starts asking Bryce if he’s seen anything like it before.
“Who is the baby?”
“A baby angel?”
After a few more guesses, they settle on Jesus.
“Now these are my favorites,” Tiffany says, moving toward two small Madonna and Child paintings.
Bryce has spied something in the next gallery —he’s standing in front of a stained glass panel lighted from behind. It shows a man holding his own head.
“He lost his head,” Bryce observes.
Tiffany wonders why the Dutch paintings are so much darker than the paintings in the gallery we just came from. I explain that the subjects and artists lived in the darker northern world and that the Dutch were Protestants who toned things down, especially their clothing.
In the middle of these old artworks, we duck into a small side gallery where collage/paintings by South Carolina native Robert Courtright are on display. Most consist of many small squares of painted paper set up in a grid.
Shawn doesn’t get it.
Back in the big gallery, he and Tiffany stop in front of “The Annunciation” by Girolamo da Santa Croce from 1540. It’s a little painting, only about 18 inches wide, but the bright colors grabbed them. She’s not sure what “annunciation” means and I explain that the angel is telling Mary she’s going to have a baby. God and some angels are looking down on them.
To the left of this scene is a baby and a woman, and another woman and child. On the other side is the interior of a church with a crucifix on the wall.
They wonder about what’s going on: Mary has just learned she’s going to have a baby, but there she is with a baby, and there’s a scene that would have happened after Jesus was crucified. They also notice scenes from the Old Testament in the painting.
We talk about how artists at the time told the whole story; they didn’t just provide a snapshot of a moment.
They spend a good eight minutes exploring the tiny painting. They quickly spy similar time convergences in another painting.
Downstairs, in the temporary exhibitions galleries, they are taken with a painting by Marc Chagall that has an image of a part man-part chicken playing the guitar.
Shawn stops in front of an abstract piece by Jean Miro: “You’ve really got to study this.”
He also likes a large collage/painting by Conrad Marca- Relli. His wife doesn’t understand why he likes this but didn’t like the Courtright collages.
“I felt like I could do those,” he says. “I couldn’t do this.”
Two huge, multicolored glass vases don’t do anything for Bryce, who announces, “It’s a different flavor.”
In front of the huge candy-colored chandelier, Tiffany says: “That is so stinkin’ cool.”
Although they’re most taken with the Renaissance and Baroque paintings upstairs, one of the last things they see also become a favorite.
Sandy Skoglund’s large photograph from 1987, “A Breeze at Work,” depicts on office scene in which all the furniture, the phone, and the clothing the workers are wearing is a brick-red color. The office is scattered with bright blues leaves.
“Your grandpa would like this — that’s funny,” Tiffany says. “I’d like to see more of that.”
