New activity – DMA Exhibit: Saints and Sinners

We were disappointed that we missed going with our Art Appreciation group to see this exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art, but better late than never. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the exhibit showcases Flemish artwork and in particular the themes of Sinners, Saints, Lovers and Fools. We noticed that the colors were very vibrant and Barbara felt that the religious characters were drawn much softer than some of those seen in the Italian religious paintings. We appreciated the explanations throughout the exhibit; for example in the gallery of “fools” paintings they talked about foolish games, in particular the rebus which was a pictorial image of a saying. How many can you guess?

A final explanation of the gallery was:  “The scenes in these paintings hold up a mirror to us. They are often full of jokes, pranks, and witty double-meanings. But the punchline is always deadly serious: don’t be like the fools and sinners in these artworks, otherwise you will never get to heaven.”

There is a test at the end of the exhibit that you can take to see which category you fit into and – no surprise – both of us fell into the “Fools” category. We were proud to wear our fool buttons the rest of the day.

New shop: Van Leeuwen ICE CREAM

One of our great weaknesses is Ice Cream. So since we were downtown we decided to try a new shop somewhere between downtown and home and came upon this one. We loved their tag line: “If you have a mouth, we have a flavor.” We sampled both Bigface Coffee Affogato and Double Chocolate Fudgy Brownie (not sure we got the name right here). Both of us opted for the fudgy brownie. Needless to say, we had chocolate grins when we left (especially when we realized we were still wearing our Fool buttons!).