Of course the purpose of visiting art galleries is to appreciate weird and wonderful works of art, but at the current exhibition of European Masters at the National Gallery of Victoria, my family and I were also in for a pleasant linguistic surprise. Apart from trying to figure out the German and French titles of the Staedel Museum’s collection without the aid of the English translations, my grandsons, whose LOTE is German, particularly enjoyed the language activity that was incorporated in the display. Selected works were accompanied by questions to engage the younger generation, and these were labelled from A to Z, each letter linked to an English word and then its German equivalent, e.g. L for lonely – einsam, which expressed a feeling in Max Klinger’s painting of a woman on a rooftop in Rome.
The exhibition opened on 19th June and runs to 10th October, 2010, so there’s still plenty of time to enjoy this cultural experience and to get some basic German lessons as a bonus.
