Finding Degas

Last week the family set off on an adventure to find Degas. Our museum, The Toledo Museum of Art, has an exhibition of the art of Edgar Degas. Part of this exhibition is a little something to engage the community.

Murals installed throughout the Toledo region feature an assortment of ballerinas drawn from Degas’s works, several of which are from paintings and sculpture featured in Degas and the Dance. Go exploring, find all the ballerinas, and post them to Instagram with the hashtag #FindDegas. All the images will be featured here and we’ll share some of our favorites on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

~ via http://degas.toledomuseum.org

So we plotted a map and set out. We quickly discovered that the whole map plotting thing was bogus. Our phones didn’t store the individual waypoints. Lame.
The first two spots were on the downtown side of things.

The weather was kind of crappy, so it was a good thing we had exact locations. Without the addresses of the buildings, we would have had to walk around in the cool, wind and occasional rain to find the pieces. Which is the point, to get out and explore, but that is meant for nicer weather.
Aside from the art downtown, there were other things to look at.
The next stop was across the river.
This one was attached to a rather interesting building that I had been in perhaps once before. There is a café, which I was keen to visit for coffee, and an anime store… which I wanted to visit, because anime. We headed to the anime store first. The place was a disaster. Stuff piled to the ceilings, boxes of toys and plushes in what I assumed were supposed to be the aisles.

This was more than Rowan could take, and really we should’ve known better. After a fairly long conversation with the owner and the purchase of a large dog, we left. Rowan was building up to a meltdown and something needed to be done, and fast.
We decided to drive to the next spot. It was about six miles away and driving usually helps Rowan calm down. When we got there, it was evident that the drive wasn’t enough. Too add to the trouble, there was a good deal of construction going on at this spot. More visual chaos and loud, unresolved, noise. But we got out and found the piece.
We were unsure if we’d be able to continue the quest, Rowan was begging to go home. Then Arwen said she was hungry. So we decided to see if a familiar, static, environment would help reset Rowan. So, off to Mexican restaurant.

What a life saver. Really, it was what everyone needed.
By lucky coincidence, there happened to be a mural right across the street from the restaurant… in a rather annoying place. Up until now, all of the murals have been accessible to pedestrians. This one, however, was on a wall for the line of a Starbucks drive thru.

The next one was going to be a bit of a drive. Originally we had planned on seeing it before this last one; but circumstances, you know? Despite having to go out of the way, spirits were high with the knowledge that we only had two more murals to find.
By the time we found this one, Rowan had completely reset and was back on board with everyone.
Finally it was time to head out to the very last one, which again, was going to be a drive…
But when we got to the address… There was nothing there.
We went into the coffee shop that was supposed to be adjacent to the address. They had no idea what were talking about. We got coffee… I mean, what else were we supposed to do?
SpyMommy and I started scouring social media to get this figured out, and came up with nothing! Then while searching the maps, we found what might be an alternate address… Circle vs. Street, that sort of thing. So we race off. We were so close to the end, yet were we going to have to give up? On the way to what turned out to be a wild goose chase, and Arwen saying, “Oh no! There’s a goose behind us!”, spyMommy messaged the one person on Instagram who had found the last piece. After realizing that the alternate address wasn’t it either, we headed out wondering, again, if we had to give up. Then a message came through, the person responded! We got the name of the place and headed off, and we found it!
Turns out it was a case of a transposed number. We were excited, but also exhausted. We just spent the better part of five hours driving around the city, so physically exhausted. Then half of that time with Rowan being desperate for stability and the familiar, so emotionally exhausted. Finally, trying to find that last piece was mentally exhausting.
Having completed the mission, we headed home, reveling in our triumph.