Pearls Cast Before Teenagers

I had to drag my daughters, kicking and screaming, to get them through the front doors of the Nelson for the first time in two years or so.

It's a bummer for me. We used to have such fun on these outings, we really did.

When I was a kid, I remember one time my parents took me and my brother to the Nelson after church. It might have been more than once, but I remember it as a single incident. And I loved it.

I think there were a couple of field trips with school there, too.

When they started offering free admission (rather, begging for an admission fee instead of demanding it), I couldn't believe something like that was really being offered up for free.

I think I paid $10 to get into the Met in New York a few years ago. I paid $18 to get into the Modern Wing at the Chicago Art Institute.

We walked through a room full of Picassos and Picasso-related art and even the coat-check was free. The Nelson has even liberalized its photography policies, allowing flash photography (not that I would stoop to a pop-up flash in there). They even make it pretty straight-forward to get in with a tripod if you know to approach security first and get a property pass for it (which I will be doing soon).

But besides having to bully the girls to get them in the front door, they took turns asking to leave for about a half hour, when I got to the Terry Evans exhibit, which does cost. I wasn't going to pay $24 to get the three of us in there when the other two of us didn't want to go.

I suggested they cop a squat while I went through, but they wanted to go get their coats and sit in the car. Fine, whatever. When I went to pay the $8 for me and didn't find a piece of folding money ($20) I was sure was in my wallet, they let me in for the $3 student price—how's that for a deal?

It was a good move, it turns out. The rest of my visit to the museum was quite pleasant, and I really enjoyed the Terry Evans photography and never once was told I was taking too long, didn't get whined at, and never had a single request to just go home and watch YouTube.

They've got the Henry Moore stuff from the balcony level of the Rozelle Court loaned out to a museum (I think in China), and they've replaced all that with a butt-load of cool Rodin stuff.

And I saw a bunch of art that I hadn't seen before, revised some old friends and even missing some of my favorites that are out of rotation seemed a bit of an experience.

So since my kids are incapable of enjoying this experience these days, I'm just going to start going alone. Regularly. And I hope someday they'll look back and see the trips we used to take as something of value.