In the MFA’s Shapiro Family Courtyard, we found the Family Art Cart, where each kid got to borrow a tote bag filled with colored pencils and a sketch book, scavenger hunt art cards to track down art, and their choice of hands-on crafts.
Nick chose a miniature building set and assembled a model bench out of wooden pegs and blocks. Anna favored a contemporary art kit called “Out of the Box’’ that let her arrange random items on the magnetized lid of the box. Its eight inner compartments - filled with colorful paper clips, doll-size pillows, keys, and shells - were irresistible to an 8-year-old organizer.
“I like that they have a place for everything and everything has a place,’’ Anna said. Then she spied Dale Chihuly’s Lime Green Icicle Tower across the courtyard and began sketching it.
For lunch, we bypassed the elegant courtyard restaurant for the more-our-speed Garden Cafeteria, which offered pizza and treats for the kids, wild mushroom bisque and a fabulous salad bar for the parents. There, we mapped out a low-ambition plan for a scavenger hunt in the Art of the Americas wing. This turned out to be more of an “I Spy’’ adventure than a leisurely stroll. Our competitive daughter sprinted through the galleries, aiming to be the first to locate every work of art.
It left little time for contemplation but priceless moments watching the children staring at a painting, or Nick wondering loudly in the mummy room, “Was it a real old dead person?’’ And just moments after Nick asserted firmly, “I wanna leave,’’ he got a second wind and sprawled out on the floor with his colored pencils to sketch a mummy tomb of his own.
It’s a different experience, seeing the museum through the eyes of a child. We didn’t cover a lot of ground. But what we saw filled us with wonder.
