Home Again in the Mid-Atlantic: Brandywine River Art Museum

We visited the Brandywine River Art Museum which has been on my list of things to do in our area since we moved to Delaware a couple years ago. Art museums and nature are places I like to go when I'm depressed or even when I'm not depressed. But I've been depressed for a month or so. Dave may have prostate cancer so that is depressing to say the least about something that is the most distressing. And with it came a conversation between him and me that brought up some really serious relationship things between him and me and that has not really resolved itself. Also, there are other family issues that are weighing on me. Tis the season, isn't it. " Well I don't know what to say except it's Christmas and we are all misery."

But the Brandywine River Art Museum certainly cheered me up for a while.

The exhibit is called Fragile Earth: The Naturalist Impulse in Contemporary Art. It features four artists, Jennifer Angus, Mark Dion, Courtney Mattison and James Prosek. Jennifer Angus had artwork that made me smile - lots of displays of insects. One of the rooms was done up only with her art. In my mind, it was laid out similar to an old museum of natural history that we'd visited somewhere in New England but I can't quite remember where...Vermont? I talked to the security guard at the door and mentioned that he must hear and see lots of odd things. The art was odd, odd in the way I like it but recognize that many people wouldn't. He said some people open the door and turn right around and go back out. I'd seen as much when I was in there. But I loved it.

Below, is a collection of found objects from the beach and it was the first thing I saw at the Brandywine River Art Museum once we were inside. It made me smile because we have found so many of the same types of things and have collections of some of them.