No, my Tribune colleague Julie Checkoway reported last week, not with UMFA's first "blockbuster" exhibit, "From Monet to Picasso," made up of more than 70 masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum had 14,551 visitors in the exhibit's first four weeks, and is on track to hit museum officials' goal of 50,000 visitors by the exhibit's final day on Sept. 21.

I saw this popularity for myself on Friday, when I took my family to see the exhibit. The museum was a bustling place, and in the first exhibit chambers one could barely move without bumping into other art lovers.

The exhibit, organized somewhat chronologically, serves as a walk-through Art History 101 course of the 19th and 20th centuries. First there are representational painters, then Impressionists, then rooms dedicated to Auguste Rodin's bronzes and Pablo Picasso's wide-ranging styles, followed by the Expressionists and ending with abstract paintings and the Surrealists.

My kids, being kids, zipped from one room to another quickly. How long does it take to look at a picture? I was pleased that they were respectful, didn't giggle at the full-frontal nude male bronze in the Rodin room, and seemed to really appreciate the art.

My 8-year-old and I sat in the Picasso room for awhile, admiring the patterns in "Harlequin with Violin" and talking about the different perspectives of the Cubist "Fan, Salt Box, Melon" - how the table is shown in both a side view and top view at the same time. But his favorite was the surreal and creepy Salvador Dali painting, "La Reve (The Dream)."

My 5-year-old's favorite was Piet Mondrian's geometric "Composition with Red, Yellow and, Blue." I think he liked the simplicity of Mondrian's lines, shapes and colors. It's also a painting he already knew, having seen it on "Blue's Clues."

Had I been viewing alone, I could have spent the day there - half of it just sitting in Picasso room. When I was 8, my mom gave me a picture book of Picasso's works, and ever since I've been fascinated with his evolution from straightforward canvasas through Cubism and beyond.

There is a thrill just seeing the real artworks - not reproductions or pictures in a book - as they are: The sunlit Monet seascapes, the elongated grace of Amedeo Modigliani's "Portrait of a Woman," the muscular chunkiness of Henry Moore's sculpture "Three-Way Piece No. 2: Archer."

When you can stand almost as close to the paintings as the artists stood creating them, art stops being something you study in school. It becomes a tangible, relevant part of your life.

Sean P. Means also writes the Culture Vulture in daily blog form at blogs.sltrib.com/vulture. Send tips, contributions and comments to vulture@sltrib.com.