If you have a chance to visit Roanoke, Virginia on a trek through the Blue Ridge Mountains, make sure you add the Taubman Museum of Art to your itinerary. The museum is in the historic market area and near the wonderful Center in the Square.

I was in Roanoke with my family recently and we headed to the Taubman Museum of Art to find out what their current exhibits might be. With the kids happily in tow, we entered our fist exhibit and saw floor to ceiling woodcut prints by Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra.  In addition to the dozens of black and white prints, there is also an installation on the gallery floor of 17 camping tents displayed as a “tent city” that have images printed on them of homeless men, women and children. In the adjacent gallery, the famous beggars in Rembrandt van Rijn’s etching from the mid-1600’s were on display. This exhibit might be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this private collection of Rembrandt’s work that is on tour.  The juxtaposition of the modern images of Houston and Mazorra’s “beggars” and Rembrandt’s images was incredible.

As we moved through the museum, I realized that the kids were most impressed with the contemporary art. They walked with us through the galleries showing American and European art, but they were truly engaged when the art was by modern artists. Russell Richards, and his creative “Inaccurate Maps” and Devorah Sperber, with her amazing sculpture of spools of thread that are transformed into Andy Warhol’s can of Tomato soup when viewed through a glass sphere, captivated our eight and ten year old kids. It was great to learn that our children really do enjoy visiting museums, especially when the art is contemporary.

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