A Trip To The Toledo Museum Of Art

The Toledo Museum of Art is a wonderful wealth of all kinds of art. The best part is that it is free to get in and only $3.00 for parking. We go quite often. When the girls were little we went to the zoo and the museum in Toledo once each week during the summer months!
I raised my kids to appreciate museums of all kinds. We travel around visiting many museums within about a 2-3 hour drive. They enjoy going to them as much as going to the zoo or a playground. I must say they make me proud as far as how they behave inside museums too. Too bad they don't consider their own home a museum!!!!!

CLICK on any image to get more detail.

This is the back entrance of the Toledo Museum of Art. It is much more grand in the front with bigger taller pillars from the steps to the green patina copper roof.
Today I will share some of the thousands of paintings they have. This was a trip that I did with just N. He needed a Mommy day and he always likes the museum as a destination. You can barely see N. in the bottom corner of this photo above.

The religious paintings are wonderful. This is just one of many. There is an El Greco in another room. The center gallery of the museum is known as the great hall and is filled with huge ornately framed paintings of religious subjects hung against deep red walls. It is quite impressive and breath taking.

For some reason, as a toddler, A. latched on to this serious and wonderful painting as her favorite. She always waited patiently to reach the gallery where is was hanging. It is about 6 feet tall and about 8 feet wide. At one time they loaned this painting to another museum and A. really missed "her painting" in it's absence. She was thrilled when it was returned as she still considers it a favorite. She has a post card of this painting. Click here to read more about this painting.

As with A., E. chose this painting, as a toddler, to be her favorite. It is "Ophelia". This is also a big piece of art; about 6 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. I have a poster print of this that I purchased years ago at the museum store. It now hangs in my bathroom. The colors in this romantic piece are absolutely perfect. E. has a postcard and magnet of this painting.

This is one of my favorite paintings in the museum. I don't know why; I just feel so drawn to it. I think that's why art is so magical, don't you. Sometimes it just speaks to you and that's all that matters. This one is about 9 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. The woman has those mysterious eyes that follow you when you walk past. Below is a closer shot of one my favorites. I would have to actually take you to the museum to show you all my favorites!!!! Wanna come some day?? Click here to read more about this painting.

You may recognize this as Degas. We are very fortunate to have such a nice collection to see any time we want. Click here to read more about this.

And here we have Monet. Yep! We are lucky, don't you agree? My kids were amazed when they saw these (Degas and Monet) in books and realized that, "Hey! We have that at our museum!!"

This is surely a magical way to paint. This is what it looks like from far away...

and this is what it looks like close up!!!!!! Thousands and thousands of square spot brush strokes.
I hope you enjoyed coming along with N. and me to see some really neat art!!!

Next time I will show you some of the super cool Egyptian stuff at the museum. Don't miss it.