Art?

Over February break, I organized a trip for my students so that they wouldn't have to sit home and watch TV all day or go with their grandma to work and be really quiet while she does accupuncture.

We went to MoMA in midtown Manhattan. This meant taking the train over the Manhattan Bridge, which I love. The kids hated it.

"What if Osama Bin Laden comes?"

"What's that water down there? Is that the ocean?"

"Miss, I heard that the beach is where the ocean begins. Is that true? It is? I'm never going there again!"

The biggest hit of the day was the food - KFC before the museum and fruit shakes from a street vendor afterwards. In between, there was much debate as to what constituted "art" and why certain "whack" pieces had made it into the collection. "I could do that!" "Why is that art?"

We learned to read the information cards on the wall and not to touch the paintings. Or anything else. No, not that either.

My biggest eighth grader, 13 and 6 feet tall (and just got a basketball scholarship to a good private high school) took pictures with his cell phone of every naked body in the museum. As we rolled back across the bridge, he scrolled through all of them so he wouldn't have to look down.