art – Whoopsie Piggle

On July 7, 2007, the expanded and renovated Akron Art Museum reopened with a retrospective exhibit of American painter Norman Rockwell. In my 1970s childhood, Rockwell’s endearing, if not sentimental, covers from the Saturday Evening Post — 322 painted over 47 years — were ubiquitously reproduced.

Yet Rockwell did not shy away from political subjects, including 1943’s Four Freedoms covers (freedom of speech and of worship, from want and from fear), 1961’s “Golden Rule” (a version of which Nancy Reagan gifted the United Nations in 1985) and 1964’s iconic “The Problem We Live With” in which 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walks to school escorted by four U.S. marshals. Bridges was the first Black child to attend a formerly all-white public elementary school in New Orleans. Though not shown, Rockwell makes clear that the crowd Bridges walked past was viciously hostile.

My first three sons, then ages 13, 10 and 7, enjoyed the exhibit, but it most impressed my second son, Hugo. The following spring, when Miller South students were to dress as their favorite artist, Hugo wore a chambray shirt, khaki pants, horn rimmed glasses and held a tobacco pipe in his mouth — just as Rockwell does in a self-portrait. Ten years later, when Hugo worked at Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts, he toured Rockwell’s nearby home and museum.

Over the years, I’ve purchased Rockwell collectibles at thrift stores and estate sales for Hugo. The most treasured is a museum-quality book with glossy color reprints, several lightly attached to pages so they can be removed and framed. Last month at the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Wallhaven, I found six porcelain replicas of various Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers. All were 50% off their already reasonable prices.

But did my nearly 28-year-old, recently married son really want half a dozen figurines? I called to check.

“Oh, it’s impossible to go overboard on Rockwell, Mama. Claudia and I were just joking that we might need to buy a display cabinet for my collection.”

After we hung up, I also found several mugs emblazoned with Rockwell images. I bought them all.

Holly Christensen found these Norman Rockwell collectibles for her son Hugo's birthday at the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Akron's Wallhaven neighborhood. — Hugo’s birthday bounty. Three of the figurines included miniature copies of the original Saturday Evening Post cover they replicate.

For many years, my family made the long drive to northern Michigan for Thanksgiving. My stepmom’s next door neighbor, who spent Thanksgivings in Ohio, would let us stay at her house. My stepmom and I used both kitchens to cook up enough dishes to cover a large table while my boys helped their grandpa, the city sexton, tidy the cemetery before he furloughed during winter’s coldest months.

After my first two sons went away to college, we managed complicated logistics to continue spending Thanksgiving together in Michigan, which we all treasured. And then, like many families, we did not gather in 2020 because of COVID. The next summer, my stepmom and the neighbor got into a (stupendously silly) dispute and we lost our place to stay.

Everyone came to Akron in 2022, but last year, Hugo, whose birthday was on Thanksgiving, had to work that weekend. From Akron and D.C., we made our way to Madison, Wisconsin. where Hugo and his wife live. Hugo again must work this year but rather than travel, we’ve decided to stay in our respective cities. There are those who persist, sometimes at great lengths, in carrying on traditions long after they are enjoyable. Forced annoyance, if not misery, makes no sense. It can also preclude the joy found in fresh experiences.

Once the decision was made, I felt a sense of relief. No long drive after days of packing food, gifts (might as well swap Christmas presents when together) and all that is needed for several humans and dogs. And with just my two youngest children with me, to heck with the traditional (labor intensive) dinner portrayed in Rockwell’s “Freedom from Want.”

The dad of my littles (now 14 and 12) had no plans, so I invited him to join us. Together we will make pork shoulder roast with peach and whole grain mustard gravy, mashed potatoes, Brussel sprouts, coleslaw and my butternut squash pies, which for more than a quarter century Hugo has considered his birthday “cakes.”

Alas, Hugo won’t be here for his pies this Thanksgiving and I had to spend a small fortune to ship his birthday bounty of fragile figurines to Madison. But I am comforted by two thoughts. First, someone’s Rockwell collection, probably donated by their children, happily made its way to a new collector. Secondly, I will make my pies again in mid-December when Hugo flies to Akron to spend a long weekend with me.

All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well. Blessings on your Thanksgiving.

Akron was recently heralded as one of the best cities for retirees because it’s both affordable and livable, something Akronites already knew. A transplant myself, I frequently extoll Akron’s friendly people, many parks with trails and, yes, affordable and beautiful housing stock.

Akron’s low cost of living also allows me to do something else I treasure — get away. Many a February, I head to warmer climes to elevate my vitamin D levels and shift my perspective. Getting out of the forest, as it were, reminds me that trees are just trees and not to sweat the small stuff.

But this year I didn’t leave the Midwest. Instead, I went to its de facto capital: Chicago.

I chose Chicago because of a French woman I long have loved. Like so many great women throughout history, Camille Claudel, who died in 1943, was all but erased from history. Fortunately, the 1988 release of the eponymous French film starring Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu launched her canonical restitution.

I saw the film 34 years ago just before traveling to France where I studied in a program that required students to visit five museums. What piffle. France offers a feast for museum lovers, and I visited dozens. But the art at the Musée Rodin so moved me, I visited it, and it alone, twice.

A prolific and talented sculptor, Auguste Rodin is perhaps best known in the U.S. for The Thinker, a larger-than-life-size bronze of a naked man, seated with an elbow on one knee, his chin on the back of that arm’s hand. The Musée Rodin, located in what was Rodin’s Paris home, has 20 Claudel sculptures permanently displayed in one room.

Photo of young Claudel behind her bust titled "Giganti" at the Art Institute of Chicago. — Photo of young Claudel behind her bust titled “Giganti” at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Twenty-four years her senior, Rodin was first Claudel’s teacher, then her lover and artistic collaborator. With their sculptures in close proximity, it’s impossible not to compare their talents, and even though it’s like contrasting the work of demigods, I found Claudel’s to be slightly superior.

The recent Camille Claudel exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago provided the chance to see 58 of Claudel’s pieces. (The exhibit closed on Feb. 19 and will reopen at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in April). Unlike most museums worldwide, the AIC is open Mondays (as is Chicago’s Field Museum and Museum of Science + Industry), which is great. Airline tickets typically cost less on Saturdays and Tuesdays than on Fridays and Mondays. Two round-trip tickets on Southwest Airlines were $372.

My companion and I arrived at Midway Airport Saturday morning, bought three-day Chicago Transit Authority passes for $15 each and took an Orange Line train to a station a block from our hotel. Cheap and easy. But the best tip is next.

CitizenM hotel chain provides a luxury hotel experience at an affordable price and, boy, do they deliver. I found them on Expedia.com when booking a room in Washington D.C. and was so impressed, I stay at CitizenM hotels whenever possible. Each room is only as wide as the king-sized bed nestled against the wall opposite the door, but because they are so efficiently laid out, the rooms never feel cramped. Located in the heart of downtown on Michigan Avenue and Wacker, I could see the Chicago River from the wall-to-wall window above the bed.

The off-season price for our room was $291 for three nights, which included all taxes and fees. Breakfast is not included, but the spread they lay out is decadent and well worth the $19 per person. In the evening, the same “canteen” has a full bar and serves a small selection of dinner options. Two 16-ounce local beers cost us $11.

After checking into our room, we walked to an Asian Lunar New Year festival at the Navy Pier and on our way back to CitizenM, stocked up on snacks at a Whole Foods that is larger than the one in Akron.

The TV in CitizenM rooms is over the die-for-it comfortable bed (after my first stay in D.C., I bought the same mattress for my home). Propped up on lush pillows–CitizenM ought to sell them to guests–we streamed the 1988 Claudel biopic. The movie holds up to the test of time and prepared us for the exhibit.

More than 30 years after first comparing her sculptures to Rodin’s, I again found Claudel the superior artist, hairsplitting though that is. (I wonder if she observed autopsies as the musculature of her figures is so exacting.) We spent two full days wandering the AIC, also enjoying other temporary exhibits — drawings by Picasso and a retrospective of South African photographer David Goldblatt — as well as AIC’s tremendous permanent collection from ancient to modern periods.

And any visit to the AIC must include viewing the 68 historically accurate miniature rooms, think dollhouses on steroids, meticulously constructed during the Great Depression. The 1:12 scale project, managed and funded by heiress Narcissa Niblack Thorne, provided much-needed employment for out-of-work artisans.

Yes, we have top-notch cultural institutions in Northeast Ohio and I’ve visited them all many times. But only when unplugged from the chores of home life by travel can most of us indulge in spending entire days at museums.

Now where to next? Hmm. New York City has two CitizenM locations and MOMA is also open on Mondays…

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, February 25, 2024.