School trip

Trip to Tate Modern Art Gallery in London today, it went OK apart from some of the boys in my class shouting "bogies" in the quietest gallery spaces, another boy spilling his drink in the foyer, two of my girls going missing and another boy remembering he needed the toilet just as we were about to leave, but we all got back alive and in the same condition as when we left (all limbs in tact etc) is a little more tired. I am not entirely sure the pupils fully appreciated the art in the gallery as one boy commented that the work was "too simple". I think he felt that the work had not had enough skill on time put into it so he could not really appreciate it. This is a view which is strengthened through school art, as merit is given to work which has or at least appears to have taken a long time to produce, and involves a large element of skill. Of course this is not really how artists work in the real world. I might suggest next time that we visit another gallery such as The National Gallery, which contains a lot more Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite work, work which has had a lot of time and effort put into it and which is representational, so the children can almost instantly relate to it.
The part that I enjoyed of the trip was going to the books shop, the Tate Gallery has the most amazing book shop ever, so many art books and on so many different subject, I could spend hours in there, I only had about 10 minutes so I bought a note pad (to satisfy my note book fetish) and a book entitled "How to be an artist". The title is a little misleading really as of course I already know how to be an artist *smug* but I had a flick through and it had some really good things in it for generating ideas, might also be able to use it with school, it was £10.00 which was rather a lot but the note book was reduced from £10.00 to £2.00 so I felt justified in making the purchase considering the saving.
A pretty good day I suppose, it is supposed to snow tonight, so fingers crossed it is another day off tomorrow!!