Roman art from the Louvre was so cool!!!

N. and I had the best time on Saturday! We were just wrapping up two months of learning about the Roman Empire, from its beginnings with King Romulus to its fall in 476 AD, when I learned that this exhibit was opening at the Seattle Art Museum this weekend. Saturday was Family Day, so there were a lot of activities planned for the kids (Roman-themed coloring pages, decorating cloth bags, button making, face painting, a juggler, Roman era costumes to try on), as well as live music and roaming actors and actresses dressed as gladiators and patricians (N. suggests that the women may have been dressed as emperors' wives). Before we left we had downloaded the audio tour from the SAM website, and N. listened to it on the drive over. She was really into it, and I'd hear an excited exclamation once in a while from her, but otherwise she refused to tell me what she was hearing about because, she said, "You'll hear it when you get there!"

While I stood in line to pay, N. went over and decorated a couple of cloth bags, one for each of us. Then we went upstairs to go see some art! After another short line, and exhanging a defective audio tour device, we were raring to go. I'm really glad N. had her own audio - she was riveted during the entire 2+ hours we took to go through the exhibit. They had the art displayed in different themed rooms: first emperors, religion, citizens of Rome, military, entertainment, and death (urns, sarcophaguses, etc). I think my favorite piece, or one I found surprising, was one of the emperor Nero - one might argue that he was one of Rome's worst emperors. This guy spent a lot of time in leisure pursuits, and really seemed more concerned with his own self-interests than those of the empire (if you need examples of this, you can give N. a call and she'd be happy to discuss his downfalls with you). On display was a statue of Nero, with his head placed upon the body of a child (apparently this was a common occurance - placing someone's head on another's body), which gave him almost an angellic appearance. It seems that Nero was really looked over by family and friends as a child, no one cared much for him, and they never anticipated him becoming emperor of Rome someday. Whereas other children in the family had statues of themselves out in the gardens, none had ever been commisioned of poor Nero. So when he was 17 and became emperor, they whipped out this statue - its stature giving some indication of the opinion others had of him at the time. I also really enjoyed the relief panels ("frieze"), though most showed animal sacrifice, which became slightly disturbing after a while. N. liked "everything", and I couldn't have been more proud of her while we were there - she was attentive, poised, and thoughtful. Really a pleasure to be with.



After going through the exhibit, N. and I both agreed that there is more about the Roman Empire we would like to learn. In particular, we'd both like to study Emperor Trajan - the history curriculum we're using never made any mention of him, but he sounds like a pretty important guy to get to know. Overall, I think our knowledge of the era was likely above that of most people who there, and having that background definitely lead to a better understanding of the art, and its significance. That's not to say that you shouldn't pop on over to the SAM to check it out if you don't know anything about ancient Rome! There's definitely lots of good background information presented to help bring you up to speed, plus the art is just impressive to look at anyway. It's also likely to get you thinking, which is never a bad thing!

The boys went on a nice, long bike ride over in Duvall. A. mentioned that highlights of their trip included a father and son passing them on horses, and spending time playing on the riverbank. This was all followed up by a stop at DQ - bike rides are always made even better when ice cream is involved!