PEM Guide for Parents

Thought I would expose Chloe to a little "cultcha" so I took her to the brand new Joseph Cornell exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum yesterday. If it's threatening rain, the PEM's usually a safe bet because a) it has a handicapped entrance with button operated entrances, b) the galleries are spacious enough to accomodate our SUV-sized Graco stroller and c) I can show them my driver's license and get in free since I'm a Salem resident. Unfortunately, the galleries' entrance doors are not handicapped equipped so I usually find myself relying on the kindness of strangers to manuever the Graco 2000 through the glass doors. Once I got inside, I was immediately approached by one of the guards who gave me a very detailed rundown of the Cornell exhibit and then asked me if I had ever taken Chloe to the Children's Museum. I glanced around the darkened, hushed gallery with its maze of glass cases surrounded by upper middle class baby boomers carefully studying the art works on display and wondered if he was trying to drop some sort of hint. Luckily, Chloe picked that moment to give out one of her Incredible Hulk-like yells and I told the guard that she was eager to see the exhibit and pushed on.

Some of the PEM's exhibits are fairly kid-friendly with lots of things low to the ground at their eyelevel and full of details and bright color. The Cornell exhibit, though, was a little less accessible to the stroller-set intelligentsia. The boxes, objects, assemblages whatever, were mostly displayed in cases that were decisively set at adult eye level. As Chloe's grunts grew louder and shriller I tried to steer her through the wandering crowd. One of the Graco's wheels began to squeak and in the thoughtful silence it sounded like a Red Line train pulling into Harvard Sq. We escaped to the connecting catwalk outside where I failed to spark her artistic sensibilities with the enormous silkscreened photos of post-WWII New York. From there we progressed into the film exhibit but since Cornell's found footage assemblages don't have anything resembling large rotund brightly colored anthropomorphic creatures with television screens in their midsections, Chloe's interest began to wane. Finally I gave up and retreated downstairs to the Art & Nature center where there were other little humans and things were more at her eye-level.

PEM Guide for Parents