The Lego Invasion of Montclair Art Museum
On Sunday, March 6, at the Montclair Art Museum, architect Stephen W. Schwartz led two sessions of fifty families each in constructing a replica of Montclair out of Legos. I was lucky enough to hang out, talk to some people in the midst of the frenetic, joyful building, and sit back and observe the day. We also made a video or two--here's one of them:
A few quick facts about the day:
*60,000 bricks were used in the construction of these fifty buildings--and they almost ran out of bricks! The structural integrity of some of these little structures was intense.
*Schwartz conducts 50 of these workshops a year, constructing cities from Montclair and Morristown to Jerusalem and Vatican City.
*This is the seventh year Montclair Art Museum has presented this event; both sessions sold out in advance.
*Legos are vastly superior to their imitation block cousins--Mega Blocks, in particular, hold together in spectacularly inferior ways (I spent a good chunk of time hunting out the awful Mega Block impostors in the huge bins of Legos--they're tricky).
*The big thrill of the day came in seeing parents and their kids revel in the organized chaos of scooping up bricks, checking out a photograph, and finding creative and surprising ways to pull off Montclair's interesting architecture. Watching fifty families spend time together playing in an art museum brought me a lot of joy.
