River in the Catskills by Thomas Cole

Last summer, while spending a week in a town just 2 ½ hours from home, I noticed that a local museum was featuring a traveling exhibit of landscape paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. We don’t live near Boston, so this was an awesome opportunity to see some great art. AND it was free! We saw paintings from the likes of Albert Bierstadt, whom we had studied a couple years prior, and several from the Hudson River Group, which we will be studying during the upcoming year. It was a great opportunity, and I’m so glad we took advantage of it.

Once we got back home, I started thinking. We don’t have any especially great museums in our area, but what if there are other traveling exhibits at local museums which we are missing out on? I did a little research, and found every museum within a reasonable distance from us, and signed up for their newsletters. For me, that distance was a 4 hour drive.

Postman Joseph Roulin by Vincent van Gogh

Then this last week we hit the jackpot!  I happened to be traveling to a city four hours away from us, and in that town was two traveling exhibits at the same museum: one of Norman Rockwell, whom we studied a couple years ago, and one called “Looking East” which included several paintings by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas.

I decided to take my kids with me on the trip so that we could see the exhibits, and WOW! I’m so glad we did. It was fabulous! I should mention that the cost for me was $10, but the kids were free!

I want to encourage you to do a little research to find any museums in your area, and get on their email list. One of the museums I found only offers a newsletter to their members, but they do have a blog which I subscribed to. In the end, it might equal a little extra mail in my inbox, but if we have more opportunities to see amazing art like this – in person – then it is well worth it.