A visit to the ICA

We visited the ICA (the contemporary art museum here in Boston) last week with friends and had a great time. Mr. 8 was very engaged and actually had quite the discussion with one of the people at the museum about the symbols in Shepard Fairey's work. Unfortunately Mr. 2 and Mr. 6 began to lose interest about that time so we had to head out but I hope to continue the discussion at home. The contradictory images Shepard Fairey puts in his images, especially given that the images themselves often have such historical and emotional signficance, make for a great starting off point and I hope he develops a much better understanding of modern history and how it is shaping our current history than I ever had. Given that I was a biochemistry major, I haven't really taken a history class since high school and then never really discussed anything much beyond World War II - maybe the Korean War if I stretch it. We've been doing History.com's This Day in History for the past year and I have learned so much from talking about it with the boys. Both Mr. 6 and Mr. 8 are really engaged and we've discussed everything from civil rights to the fall of communism. We've been known to pull up a map of the Warsaw Pact and watched a very young Tom Brokaw interview East Germans the day the Berlin Wall came down. We would definitely recommend it to anyone with older kids - makes for some great dinner discussions!