The 'Wild Things Are' in Virginia Beach

By Caroline Luzzatto
The Virginian-Pilot

The night Max wore his wolf suit...

None of the staff members setting up the Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, set to open Friday, are wearing furry tails or pointed ears. Many, however, wear white gloves. After all the research and all the paperwork and all the insurance details, they take this one last step to protect the artwork, which in this case includes reproductions of Sendak's iconic illustrations for "Where the Wild Things Are" and other children's books, plus sketches, photos, notes and even first drafts scrawled on ragged-edged notebook paper.

and made mischief of one kind and another...

No gloves are necessary for the part of the exhibit that associate curator Heather Hakimzadeh gazes at gleefully and proclaims, "That's going to be a hit." It's a giant bowl of chicken and rice soup that children can slide into. The rice is styrofoam, the carrots are cloth and the chickens are rubber. Staff members setting up the soup toss yellow styrofoam balls into the bowl as if they're at a carnival. Does it look as good as homemade to Hakimzadeh? "I'm vegetarian," she says.

his mother called him "WILD THING!"...

Calls go up for someone to test the soup. Monée Bengtson climbs the ladder. On other days, she's a registrar and preparator, dealing with loan agreements and insurance riders. "I've been called a suit," she admits. Today, she gets to do the fun part.

Bengtson gets stuck at the top of the slide. She has forgotten to take off her shoes. She's too tall. Hakimdazeh laughs. "We'll bend the rules for you," she says. Bengtson wiggles herself unstuck and lands in the soup with a squeal.

"That was fun," she says.

and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"

The full title of the show is "Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak in His Own Words and Pictures," a long name that barely hints at how complex the author and illustrator's life and work are. Ragan Cole-Cunningham, the director of exhibitions and education, said the exhibition tapped into her own interest in contemporary illustration and her respect for Sendak's exploration of the darker side of childhood. "I think the stories are difficult at times," she said. "There's a dark underbelly."

so he was sent to bed...

Cole-Cunningham read her daughter Sendak's "Outside Over There," a simultaneously gentle and scary story about a baby being taken away by goblins, and it alarmed the 5-year-old - but fascinated her, too. "She kept going back to the story," Cole-Cunningham said,

It reminds her of her own experiences with Sendak. Her father read "Where the Wild Things Are" to her when she was 3 or 4. "I had nightmares," she said, standing with her back to a giant reproduction of wild things swinging through trees.

without eating anything.

The exhibition opens Friday with a free children's breakfast and reception from 10 a.m. to noon, and schools have already started booking class tours. The goal, Cole-Cunningham said, is to encourage both literacy and imagination, and visitors can not only see artwork and video clips of Sendak, but also sail away in Max's ship, dress up in costumes, play with kitchen equipment and read books on "Rosie's stoop."

... and he sailed off through night and day...

Back on the loading dock is a mass of enormous, empty, black, wheeled boxes that look like a giant's luggage. That's what the whole display was packed in, and it'll wait there through the May 23 closing day.

The exhibition was organized by the Breman Museum in Atlanta, and waiting for everything to arrive was, as always, a bit nerve-wracking, Bengtson said. "We're kind of relieved to see the work come in, when the trucks come in."

"... to where the wild things are..."

At Friday's opening, the wild thing costumes will finally be laid out for young things to try on, near a mirror where they can admire themselves. As the staff scurried through the gallery last week, white-gloved, dodging artwork yet to be hung, toolboxes, and piles of nuts and bolts, those furry alter-egos waited on a hook behind Cole-Cunningham's door. "Yes," she sighed. "I have an office full of wild thing costumes." They'll be caged there until the preparations are, at long last, done.

"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"

Caroline Luzzatto, caroline.luzzatto@pilotonline.com