Say Hi to Lowbrow

I'm one of the crotchedy few who isn't thrilled by the Dr. Seuss "Memorial Sculpture Park" plopped down in the middle of the otherwise elegant quadrangle of the Springfield Museums. I'm crazy about Theodore Geisel, Springfield's most famous son, and I don't dislike the bronze statues designed by his step-daughter, Lark Grey Dimond-Cates. I just don't think they belong in that spot.

Formerly, the gracious sweep of lawn set off the beautiful buildings when viewed from any angle. Now the whole space is all wrong: lopsided and crowded. Standing on the steps of the Art Deco Museum of Fine Arts, looking toward the Italianate George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, your view is blocked by a giant cartoon elephant. WTF?

I believe the purpose of sticking them there, rather than in Forest Park where they belong, is to lure crowds to the museums. Once you've made the pilgrimage with the kiddies to see Horton the Elephant, the Cat in the Hat and the Lorax, you might as well make an afternoon of it and acquire some culture.

For those families who manage to make it from the parking lot past the Welcome Center and the Museum of Natural History to the statues without buying a ticket for the special dinosaur exhibit now underway, this costumed T. Rex has been hanging around as a marketing ploy. I was reminded of the aggressively friendly costumed jerks roaming Brussels's Mini-Europe, insistent on taking your exorbitantly expensive souvenir picture.

So much for the cabinet of curiosities. Museums are becoming more like theme parks every day.

Ted Geisel's Nightmare

When I was a high school student in Springfield, I used to spend a fair amount of time in the Quadrangle across the street from Classical High. A Carnegie library formed one side of the square, and museums of art, science, and history formed the others. I thought it was one of the prettiest places that could ever be. Of course, what did I know? I'd never been anywhere.

Fast forward forty years. I've travelled all around the country, to Canada and Mexico, the West Indies, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and I still think it's one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. I can't say there's any building in the world I like better than the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum. Not even the Louvre. Or the Prado. Or the Tate. Or the cathedral of Chartres.

Of course, when you like something, you want it to stay just the same. I'm irritated no end by the fence that's gone up around the Quadrangle, and I'm not in love with the Dr. Seuss sculptures, either. I believe they were crowded into the middle of the Quad to attract people into the museums, although I think they would have been more appropriately situated in Forest Park, the place where Theodore Geisel grew up, hung around, and presumably got the inspiration for his fantastical creatures.

Now when you look at the GWVS from the other end of the quad, you have to look past a life-sized statue of a pensive Ted Geisel seated at his drawing board, and through a giant Horton the elephant. It's as though Geisel's imaginings have been turned to bronze behind his head.