November 2008
Ages & Stages: Elementary Ages
The Fine Art of Visiting Art Museums With Children
By Robyn Des Roches
When Matthew Imlay’s second grade class learned about the 19th -century French artist, Henri Matisse, they pored over reproductions and made their own colorful collages using Matisse’s cut-paper technique. Matthew’s mother decided to follow up the lesson in a distinctly Washingtonian way. She took her son to the National Gallery of Art, where the 7-year-old was able to examine the museum’s large Matisse collection firsthand. “Matthew was really excited to see the things he had studied in school,” says his mother, Bethesda resident, Susan Imlay. “He told me all about them, and we both remarked on how wonderful it is to live near museums with such great collections.”
World-Class Museums, And They’re Free!
Ask anybody what’s special about living in the Washington, D.C., area, and they likely will mention the city’s world-class museums. Easy, free access to treasures, like Matisse’s cut-paper collages, becomes a greater benefit when you add children to the mix. “I was finishing graduate school and thinking of moving back South,” recalls Catherine McCallum, now a Bethesda mother of two. “But then I thought of all the museums here and I realized what a great place this would be to raise children.”
Parents often credit the District’s art exhibitions from such far-flung corners of the globe as Japan, Africa and Afghanistan with raising their children’s cultural awareness. Others see art museum visits as a necessary complement to shrinking classroom curricula. Child development experts go even further, arguing that interactive art experiences help young children develop visual acuity and critical thinking skills, both of which bolster literacy. Moreover, in a high-tech world of flashing screens and flitting attention, museums allow children a rare opportunity to slow down and take a close, thoughtful look at objects that reward attention.
Children between the ages of 4 and 8 make the perfect first-time art patrons. They are sponges for new ideas but not yet self-conscious about expressing their opinions. In addition, they generally can muster the self-control to walk, even though they’d rather run, to remain reasonably quiet and to keep their fingers off the museum displays.
Visiting the Museums
To ensure a successful museum experience, experts suggest a few guidelines. Most importantly, keep trips short. Plan to view art for no more than 15 to 20 minutes. When fatigue sets in, offer your child a sketchpad while you sit and take a break. If you focus on having fun, your child is bound to learn something along the way.
One 4-year-old boy devoted his first National Galleryof Art trip to riding the moving walkway, eating gelato and gazing at the underground water cascade. But while exploring the East and West wings on subsequent visits, he also fell in love with Calder, counted 23 babies in the Italian Renaissance galleries and picked out a postcard of his favorite animal picture. “It’s like sneaking spinach and carrots into his spaghetti,” his mother confesses. “I’m nourishing him on the sly.”
Consider loosely structuring museum visits around playful games that offer a reassuring sense of purpose while also encouraging independent exploration. Scavenger hunts, counting challenges and memory quizzes are popular choices among parents who also give high marks to museum-provided activity sheets for kids. To make a visit feel more personal and less overwhelming, some families prefer to plan ahead, scrolling through a museum’s collection online and letting their kids select the few pieces they’d most like to see. Others add still more structure to their cultural outings by attending a hands-on family program that includes time to create art of their own as well as observe the work of the masters.
Always remember that one of the great things about D.C. museums is the ability to make a swift exit without feeling the financial pinch. If a deal-breaking meltdown happens just minutes after checking your coat, don’t hesitate to leave. “I never dared try this in New York where I had to drop $20 at the door,” a recently transplanted Manhattanite with three kids confessed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden one afternoon. “But here in Washington, I never give it a second thought. We have nothing to lose – whether we’re here for three hours or off to the Mall carousel in 10 minutes. It’s all good.”
No matter how well you plan, sometimes the unexpected is what you’ll remember best. Amy Patton, a Bethesda mother of two, still recalls the moment when the swirling colors of a Jackson Pollock splatter painting stopped her then 4-year-old son, Dell, dead in his tracks. “It was like watching an epiphany. I would hardly have noticed that painting, but he was absolutely fascinated. The way he was looking made me look, too, and it suddenly dawned on me how impressive it was – how difficult it must have been to layer all that paint.”
Perhaps like Pollack’s free-form splatter, then, the best art museum visits aren’t overly designed. Simply seeing the world through your child’s eyes, as she sees the world through an artist’s eyes, opens an illuminating window for everyone in the family.
Make Your Trip to the Art Museum a Thing of Beauty
- Visit early in the day when everybody is fresh. Make sure tummies are full and bladders are empty before you hit the galleries.
- Keep restrictions to a minimum so that the emphasis is on fun. The most important rule is “NO TOUCHING.” Paint can flake off pictures if they’re bumped, and the oil in our skin discolors sculptures.
- Ask open-ended questions, encouraging children to back up their statements with visual evidence (“What’s going on in this picture/sculpture? What do you think will happen next? What do you see that makes you say that?”).
- Allow your child to take a bit of the museum home by purchasing a postcard of a favorite work of art.
Online Museum Activities for Kids
At the National Gallery of Art website your child can create an abstract masterpiece using an online painting machine or compose a still life using visual elements from the museum’s collection. www.nga.gov/kids/kids.htm
The Smithsonian invites children to create a virtual sculpture or discover what’s missing from the famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. smithsonianeducation.org/students/explore_by_topic/everything_art.html
Robyn Des Roches is a museum consultant and parent education leader with the Parent Encouragement Program (www.PEPparent.org), which teaches classes to parents of children from birth through the teen years.