Eric Carle Museum Visit

            

          Over the weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Eric Carle Museum for the first time and will certainly be back.  Aside from learning about the illustration style and works several of my favorite authors I also learned a great deal of biographical information about Eric Carle as well.  Any educator, student or children’s book lover would definitely love a trip to this museum and I would highly encourage it.

            Upon entering the museum you find a hallway that houses four very large murals that Eric Carle created.  Each follows a similar pattern of the others but they all have varying colors within them.  Upon entering the galleries you have option to enter the east or west gallery, the east housing an exhibit of iconic images that the museum has housed over the last ten years and the west being home to Carle’s personal works.  I first visited the east gallery which is titled “Iconic Images: Ten Years of Collecting for the Carle” the gallery was quite large and was sectioned off by various floating walls, which in essence created five different sections throughout the gallery.  Each wall had several illustrations from a vast selection of authors/illustrators, every illustration was accompanied by a placard that displayed the name of the author their birth and death years, the quote found on the page the illustration was also on, the book that the illustration is found in, the publishing company and year, the medium or mediums used to create the illustration and lastly in some cases who gifted the illustration.  Some of the authors who are housed in the east gallery include: Mo Willems, William Steig, Jules Feiffer, Quentin Blake, Hillary Knight, Toni DiTerlizzi, Walter Harrison Cady, Ludwig Bemelmans, Arnold Lobel, Le Lionni, Simms Taback, Maurice Sendak, and Mordicai Gerstein.  I was shocked to see that I recognized many of the different artworks in the gallery, and in conjunction their illustrator.  For example the gallery had several of Maurice Sendak illustrations from Where the Wild Things Are, an image from Leo Lionni’s,  Tillie and the Wall, and even the cover illustrations by Simms Taback for There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  It was very interesting to see the different mediums that the authors used, I would have never guessed that Simms Tabback used pen, ink and watercolor in his illustrations, I was just as surprised to see that Ludwig Bemelmans used collage techniques with ink over graphite for his illustrations in Madeline and the Gypsies.  Another interesting aspect of the east gallery was the biographies made available to visitors.  There were a few benches throughout the room that housed bins with books by the authors in the gallery as well as a binder whose cover read “Artist Biographies for Iconic Images: Ten Years of Collecting for The Carle” these binders were compilations of biographical information of the authors found throughout the gallery in chronological order.  These binders provided useful information to any visitor but would be a great supplement for any field trips that may find their way to the Eric Carle Museum.

            Next you travel through the central gallery, which you do not see from the entryway.  The central gallery was titled “Our British Cousins: The Magical Art of Maisy and Friends” when I first read the title of this gallery I assumed that the art I found would be from various illustrators that are from Britain, however when I read the first placard I realized that all of the art in the central gallery was created by Lucy Cousins.  Lucy is most well known for her creation of Maisy the friendly mouse that many children have read about, however she has created several other characters throughout her career as well.  The art in the central gallery is arranged in chronological order beginning with artwork composed by Lucy when she was only three years old, her art progresses over the year all the way to work created in 2010.  The gallery is mainly comprised of illustrations of Lucy’s most famous character Maisy, but also includes others.

            The third and final gallery is the west gallery, which houses work of Eric Carle himself.  The gallery opens with a large canvas with a picture of Eric at work and a bit of biographical information.  Through this piece of text I learned that Eric Carle has published over 70 picture books, that he began his work in art as a poster artist in the 40s, and that he still creates art today including photography work.  Like Lucy Cousins work in the central gallery, the west gallery is mainly set up in chronological order.  I first saw some of the work that Eric Carle created for Amerika Haus after a stint at the academy of Applied Arts in Stutigart.  After his work on posters and book jackets Eric Carle began creating Linoleum Cuts, which from what I understand are essentially stamps carved out of linoleum rather than rubber he continued this until the mid 60s.  The gallery also has some art that Carle calls “Artart” which is non-representational art that are mainly collages that focus on color.  Eric Carle created these not for picture books but rather for the sake of creating art he used various mediums including metal and painted glass on this “Artart.”  Through the museum I also learned that when creating illustrations for his picture books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear Eric Carle would create large collages generally out of crepe paper.  One other section that I found interesting was that which housed illustrations that Eric Carle drew when he was employed to create the costumes for “The Magic Flute” a musical that took place in Springfield MA.  To create these costumes he painted on large sections of Tyvek, a housing material, with brooms and large paint brushes.  The gallery rounded out with some recent photographic street art that Eric Carle took in observation of often overlooked features in everyday life.

            Overall, I found the trip to the Eric Carle Museum very rewarding, not only did I learn a great deal about some of my favorite authors but I also got to examine original art pieces that I may otherwise never have seen.  It is truly intriguing to learn so much about Eric Carle outside of the little bit of his artwork that I knew before this trip.  Also, I now see how beneficial it would be to study artwork in my classroom in the future.  Not only do I think that kids will be interested in it after watching several children get very excited during their own visits to the museum, but I would also love to hear their interpretations and input.  Lastly, studying picture book art would allow students to consider creating accompanying illustration for their writing.

MA Curriculum Frameworks that my museum visit utilized:

RL 1.7 Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting,   

or events.

RI 1.7 Use the illustrations and details in a text to describe its key ideas.