Pallant House

We have made a few trips to Pallant House Art Gallery in Chichester this year.

The Daddy One took Big Small, age 6, on Thursday night because as a double bonus Pallant House is both open late and free to get in. She had a fabulous time as there were some dancers there from Chichester College doing a routine all over the gallery space which she thought was fantastic. In fact she danced round our house for quite some time after arriving home! and you can see her in the photo above dancing in the courtyard of the Gallery. Her two favourite things at Pallant House are the small rainbow picture in the sort of 'store room' reserve room exhibition space and, up until recently, she loved Barnaby Barford's(?) animation video in the cupboard in the bedroom where two broken china objects fall in love and dance but, sadly for her, the Contemporary Eye Crossovers exhibition is now finished.

Middle Small loves the Matisse Snail and, back in January, was inspired enough to make his own interpretation. You aren't actually allowed to take photos in the Gallery but I only saw the sign after I had taken this one. Opps! Sorry!

Baby Small loved the taxidermery fox that was there, again as part of the Contemporary Eye,: Crossovers, just after Christmas and kept saying "Fox again, Fox again!" all the way round the Gallery.

Anyhow enough of the past, back to Thursday, The Daddy One really enjoyed the Robin and Lucienne Day pieces especially the British Rail bench and the Robin Day stacking chairs which ,we both agree, are the kind of design so fabulous you assume that no one actually designed it but that it has always just existed! In the true middle age way that a trip to an art gallery inspires us now we spent ages looking at retro Day fabrics on ebay when they returned home and were inspired to select some new blinds for the kitchen!

I would recommend taking children to Pallant House. As I have blogged about before it is half price on a Tuesday and free on a Thursday night. Recently we took The Smalls to Tate Modern to see the Miro exhibition, at the time I thought I was being paranoid about the anti child sentiment but when I joined in the debate on the Tate blog afterward there were numerous complaints about pushchairs and children. Where do these complainers imagine the next generation of artists will come from? By contrast the staff at Pallant House have always been very polite and kind to my children and even set up a little impromptu quiz for them once.