Dallas Museum of Art

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

For the last several years we have enjoyed the Homeschool art programs at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Kimball Art Museum, but now the Dallas Museum of Art has begun their own homeschool program. Our homeschool group broke off into groups by grade levels and then went on docent led tours through different galleries. Abigail's group went through the Arts of the Americas gallery, while Caleb and Frankie visited the Past to Present: Arts of Mexico and Central and South America gallery.

.

Abigail's favorite piece in the collection was Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs, 1861. Church exhibited it to enthusiastic crowds in New York City and Boston, who paid 25 cents per person to see his spectacular vision of this distant world. He then donated all proceeds to widows and orphans, this would be the beginnings of what is now the Red Cross.

.

Caleb's favorite was the Central Mexican god of rain and lightning whom the Aztecs called Tlaloc. Peoples of the time believed that Tlaloc lived in mountain caves, the source of fertility and wealth, and his helpers, the tlaloque, lived on mountaintops, where shrines to the deity were often built.

.

Frankie's favorite was a richly decorated cabinet is believed to have been constructed for the Count of Monclova, the viceroy first of New Spain (Mexico) and later of Peru. Intended as a collector’s cabinet to house and display precious objects, it was produced in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, on the west coast of India. It was made of Mahogany, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, pewter, and gilding.