What do a frog, a raven and a jaguar have in common?
One croaks, one caws, one growls.
One hops, one flies, one runs.
One's warty, one's feathered, one's furry.
So they don't seem much alike at all.
But if you sit on the floor of the Art of the Americas gallery at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and look all around you, you might discover this simple fact: the frog, the raven and the jaguar are all animals particularly admired in the cultures of Native and Mezzo-America. And their images show up frequently in art from those cultures.
So, you might see a raven's face that was carved into a mask by the Tsimshian people of the Northeast or one made by the Kwakiutls. You might look at a jade carving of a bird made in Mexico between 1000 and 100 B.C. Is it a raven, too?
Maybe while you look at these ravens you'd like to read a story about "How Raven Stole the Sun." Raven was considered a trickster in Northeast cultures, and they credit him with bringing light to their world.
Maybe you can find jaguars pictured on Mayan plates and incense burners. Do they look like the jaguars you see at the zoo? Maybe you'd like to color a picture of one of these intricate pre-Columbian designs.
Can you find the frog on the Kwakiutl chief's headdress? Is that a frog painted on the nearby mat made of split cedar roots? Would you like to draw your own picture of a frog?
These are the kinds of activities you can do if you check out one of the family backpacks at the museum.
The backpacks are filled with anywhere from four to 10 activities specifically tied to one of the museum's collections and geared to kids age 4-12, explains Rebecca Pickett, associate curator of education who put together the program. It is based on a program she saw at the Denver Museum of Art; currently about 20 museums around the country offer backpack programs.
"It's kind of like going on a treasure hunt," says Pickett. The kids have a lot of fun discovering hidden jewels in the museum. More importantly, she says, "it makes the museum less intimidating. They learn that art is not something to be afraid of, that an art museum can be a fun place to spend an afternoon."
That's something that Monet, 6, and Brickell, 10, have already discovered, says their mother, April Nielsen. "This is a fun way to experience art." The girls are working out of the European Art backpack, and are having fun draping fabric they way its draped on the portrait of a princess. They have a bottle of perfume, so they can smell the flowers the princess carries in a basket on her head. They draw their own pictures of a princess.
Monet, especially, works very hard on her art, says her mother. "When I grow up I'm going to be an artist," says Monet, proudly. "Brickell wants to be a dancer, but I want to do sculptures and let people see them."
Janie Saviers-Steiger, 6 1/2, and her brother, Carson, 4, are having equal fun in the gallery of ancient art. They put together a puzzle, they read a book about Egyptian art and mummies. "This is so great," says their mother, Georgia Saviers. "Just the other day they heard a Halloween song and were asking what a mummy is, and here they are."
Carson likes putting together a string of beads. For Janie, the hieroglyphics are fascinating. "I wrote my name and my brother's name!"
Other backpacks focus on Asian, African and early American art.
With the African pack, you might get to play some African musical instruments or read a book about masks. Then you get to vote on which mask you like best, and make a mask of your own.
In the Asian gallery, you might learn about a thousand-year-old camel, try to pose like Shiva or draw a picture of yourself with an animal head.
From the Early American pack, you can learn about portraits. You can vote for your favorite, and then draw one of yourself. You can match landscapes with their locations on a map. You can play marbles.
The packs are designed to take 45 minutes to an hour to complete, maybe a little longer with several children. "We had one family that checked out all six packs and spent the whole day," says Pickett. "It's been very popular, even though we've done very little advertising."
Typical, she says, is an e-mail she got from the mother of a 5-year-old. "When it came time for her birthday party," the woman wrote, "she wanted to have it at the Museum of Fine Arts and do backpacks! You beat out Chuck E. Cheese, Hollywood Connection and all the other competitors. Of course, to show proper respect to the museum, we decided to do a family 'party' with the backpacks and take all the noisy 5-year-olds elsewhere. As a parent, though, that really demonstrated what an impact the backpacks have had on her."
The reaction they get most often, says Lori Haddan, a museum intern who works with the program, "is 'More!' They want even more activities. They all say they learned things they didn't know before. It's a great way to introduce kids to art. And it's great to see families doing them together."
At the museum, adds Pickett, "we consider family anyone from age 2-90. The backpacks are kid-sized, but adults can learn from them, too."
Art is something we can all have in common.
E-MAIL: carma@desnews.com