Lance Around Orlando

Montessori Students Observing a Sculpture at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens

A wonderful place to visit during your trip to Orlando are the quaint towns of Winter Park and Maitland, located just north of Orlando.  Here you will find a wide variety of fantastic restaurants, beautiful shops, the Enzian Theatre, the Maitland Art Center and the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens.

Polasek's "Emily Fountain" In Front of the Entrance to the Museum

Today Number One Daughter’s Montessori School of Celebration took a field trip to the Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens and Mrs. LanceAround and I volunteered to drive.  Since we used to live on the border of Winter Park, we had driven by the museum many times, but never stopped for a visit.  The museum appeared nice, yet nothing enticed us to enter.  Today we discovered just what we were missing.

# 1 Daughter Sketches a Statue

The museum is housed in Albin Polasek’s retirement home.  He personally designed the home and moved there in 1950 at the age of 70 after a 30 year distinguished career as the head of the sculpture department at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.

Museum Curator, Karen Louden, Addresses the Montessori Students

Albin was born in Frenstat, Moravia (now Czech Republic) in 1879 and immigrated to the United States in 1901.  He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and became an American citizen.  In 1910 he won the distinguished Prix de Rome competition which gave him a three-year fellowship at the American Academy of Art in Rome.  By 1933 he received the honor of full academician status in the illustrious National Academy of Design.  This allowed him to place the coveted N.A. after his signature.

Montessori Students Bryana (foreground) and Kaitlin (background) Complete Their Sketches

In addition to housing the largest collection of Albin Polasek sculptures, the museum and sculpture gardens also feature beautiful gardens, exquisite landscapes, other prominent sculptures, travelling exhibitions, camps, lectures and much more.  For the lucky readers of my blog who are seeking “More Than a Mouse”™ this is one place you will enjoy visiting!

Montessori Student Amy Capturing a Work of Art

This entry was posted on October 31, 2009 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Art Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.