An art outing

One night a couple weeks ago, Abby phoned: "Poppop, would you take me to the art gallery tomorrow?" Would I ever! I had been planning to suggest a gallery outing to her the next time I saw her.

She is a wonderful gallery companion. She's interested in everything -- paintings and sculpture, figurative art and nonrepresentational, classical and modern. She can explain why she likes some pieces and not others. She's very knowledgeable -- how many 8 year olds do you know who can explain Picasso's blue period and tell you who the model was for his cubist portraits? And she's fun: In each room, we scanned all the works and then met in the middle of the room; on the count of 3, we each walked to our favorite piece. It was a simple game but we laughed a lot.

A special treat: I thought we would spend most of our time in the East Building, looking at modern art. On our way there, however, we got sidetracked in the West Building by the Chester Dale collection -- 60 or 80 paintings from, say, 1850 to 1920, or something like that. You know, lots of Monets, Manets, Picassos, Cassatts, van Goghs, Modiglianis, Renoirs. Fabulous stuff. So we didn't have as much time in the East Building as I had planned. I'm hoping we get back there soon.