Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is a sunny art museum on the bay surrounded by a pleasant sculpture garden. It is also the place where my middle child developed a category for art called “sad art.”

 

The conversation started when I found him alone in the “Three Kings Weep” installation by Ebony G. Patterson. The vulnerability and the resilience of the three figures echoes in the small room. “Why are they crying?” he asks. His older brother answers, “because they are sad.” I watch my son sit quietly, and then I accidentally bump into a few people trying to navigate out of Patterson’s night garden.

When I find the rest of my family, my seven year old (the older brother) asks if I saw the body parts in the tapestries on the walls. The artworks are so ornamental that you can easily miss the ghostly hands and feet reaching out from underneath (or behind or elsewhere). Patterson excels at making the hidden parts of social or racial injustice felt. And learning to observe or sense the invisible parts of life is one the reasons we keep going to see art with our children. Another is being able to imagine making something beautiful out of sadness.

After we left Patterson’s exhibition, “…while the dew is still on the roses…,” my middle son kept asking me questions about sad art. His curiosity about why someone makes sad art and if I make sad art, echo in my thoughts. I wonder if there is a sadness that I need to be more sensitive to holding and making beauty out of.