Art in the National Gallery of Canada

My daughter, the Bean, loves art but asking her to spend three or four hours with me at the National Gallery would be a test even for the most patient kid.  So, I look for ways to make our visits more interesting for her.  This past summer, we invaded the gallery wielding notebooks and pens with a mission:  identify our five favourite pieces of art.  Here are our results:

The Bean:

1. Italian Cabinet (1610-1615):  A beautiful piece inlaid with stone, metal and exotic wood.
2. Canoe Paddles:  A pair of beautiful maple canoe paddles elaborately carved from 1880.
3. Nunali (Jackoposie Oopakak, 2003):  This is a stunningly carved Inuit sculpture with a caribou head carved from serpentine with hunting scenes and snippets of daily life carved into a rack of caribou antlers.
4. Tabernacle (Paul Jourdain, c. 1741):    A beautiful carved wood tabernacle that graced the St. Antoine de Longueil church near Montreal.
5. Apron Kwaka'waka:  A lovely Aboriginal beaded apron.

I'm interested in why the Bean picked, with one exception, craft items.  When asked, she shrugs amd says "because they're cool.  Good enough, I guess.

Geoff:

1. Kitchen Door and Esther (Christiane Pflug, 1965):  I love this painting for its pure sentimentality.  Something I enjoy doing is surreptitiously watching my daughter from afar when she is intent on some task - writing, reading, drawing.  This painting reminds me of that.
2. To Prince Edward Island (Alex Colville, 1965):  This is an iconic Canadian painting and I am nothing if not Canadian.  I know realist paintings are hopelessly out of fashion among the cognescenti, but they can stick it in their ears.
3. Nunali (Jackoposie Oopakak, 2003):  See above.  This is the first sculpture you see when you walk through the doors of the Indigenous Gallery.  It impresses in its scale and the detail and skillfulness of the carving and highlights an important element of tradition of Canada's Northern Indigenous people.
4. Eve, the Serpent and Death (Hans Baldung, c. 1510):  I love the macabre and grotesque Death juxtoposed with the coquettish Eve.
5. Iris (Vincent Van Gogh, 1889):  I am crazy about Van Gogh.  Hard to believe this guy was depressed with his wildly colourful and joyful paintings thick with impasto.

If anybody is ever in Ottawa I highly recommend the National Gallery.  They have a pretty good collection and the building itself is worth the price of admission.  If you're travelling wth children, I recommend finding a way to engage them, otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of impatient whining.  I suggest them picking their five favourite pieces, or a favourite from each themed gallery, or an art scavenger hunt - find a painting with an insect in it, a motorcycle in it, etc.  You can reasearch these things on the National Gallery website.  The Gallery also has special activities for kids on certain days through its Artissimo program.