Does it Count If We Didn't Go Inside? (Just Another Museum Visit)

A couple weeks ago my cousin was married in Albuquerque, NM.  My family was feeling desperate to escape a long winter in Boston, so we hopped a plane and crashed the wedding (with an invitation, of course).  In addition to the fun family festivities and lots of treats, we sampled a bit of the charm of this town.  But can you believe it?  We did not visit one museum!  There is a fabulous children's museum, Explora, a hot air balloon museum, some fantastic art museums, even a snake "museum" (I wasn't sure it qualified as a museum as I am 95% sure it was not a non-profit organization, being in a tourist trap shop.  :) ).  And we went in none of these--this visit.  Our one foray into the local museum world was spending a lovely hour in the sculpture garden outside the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. 

There are a couple of different opinions about how art should be treated when it is not behind a rope or a glass box or a security system.  I've been told--at the same place--by two different authority figures not to touch/climb on the art for fear of breaking them, and by another that it was meant to be a tactile experience and was designed to withstand people interacting with it.  I can understand both viewpoints.  I suppose I think that unless an object outside is placed in an out-of-reach location (say, a heroic statue of George Washington in a public plaza) or has a sign saying "don't touch" the art/object is fair game.  Obviously this opinion is qualified by treating the objects with respect, as you would any property not belonging to you.  Plus, I figure that if a bronze sculpture, discovered under the ocean in a shipwreck from ancient Greece, is still in decent condition two thousand years after it was created, my five year old can hardly do much more damage to a recent art creation exposed to weather.  I assume that metal and cement are pretty hardy materials and can withstand my three-year-old and your three-year-old as well.

Oops, I didn't ask my mom's permission to post this picture of her!  I am including it because it illustrates one of the aspects of the power of art to simultaneously bring out the playful in us (whatever our age), as well as the deeply, quietly thoughtful.  Whether actively engaging with the art, pondering by ourselves in a separate space (for example, playing with the gravel rocks by oneself), or in conversation with other observers, the links between art and our perception of our world, our reality is sublime.  I sometimes learn the most from my children, sometimes from people who normally have nothing to do with art in their regular routine, and sometimes from learned scholars who study nothing but a single work in history.  Don't you just get tingles when you think of how much insight and beauty there is to be told or shown by those around us?  I hope it's not just me!

Finally for this pseudo-museum visit recap, my personal favorite was a piece that was reminiscent of a Native American sacred circle.  I climbed in and lay right down in the ground to look up through the rainbow-hued shapes framing the sky.  It was such a calm and peaceful moment.  I may even have closed my eyes for a moment to soak it all in.  Then all of a sudden I hear, "Mommy?  What are you doing down there?"  Quiet moment over, but sweet tender feelings overwhelmed me as I peered up at my children peering down at me all surrounded by a cozy space.  A space that could fit all of us together and eternity besides.

 

Do you count this little wander as a museum visit?  Have you explored a sculpture garden recently?  What are your opinions on touching the art work if there is not a sign explicitly saying not to?  Have you and your children felt broadened in spirit and in mind by interacting with art?  I'd love to hear all your thoughts on any of these topics!

Tip #3 for Visiting the Museum with Young Children: Get On the Same Level as the Child

Okay, maybe this one has always been super obvious to everyone but me.  Like, I have no problem getting down on the floor and reading stories with kids climbing all over me and putting a train track together on the carpet with my boys.  I learned early on with a tantruming toddler that crouching down and holding them eye to eye was more productive and reassuring than looming five feet above them and calling down frustrated words.  But for some reason it took me a long time to figure out that it is so essential to do the same in a museum.

I think my awe of the sacred space that is a museum overrode my instincts as a caregiver to very young children.  I mean, for several years I was going to museums with my children (art, history, and natural history as well as children's museums) with my first baby, then toddler and second baby.  I figured a lot of stuff out along the way.  Yet I think I still viewed the visits selfishly, that we were going to go and we were going to enjoy it for me.  I somehow expected that my very very young children would suddenly and magically behave differently inside the hallowed halls of a museum.  By that I mean behave like a grown-up.  (A well-behaved grown-up, that is.)  And though my kids behave quite well, thank you, in a museum (and better than some adults) they are kids through and through.  Of course!  They don't change when they step through the door to the building. 

Perhaps at first they do, a little.  A new experience and place is a reason for a bit of caution and wariness.  A return to regular kid behavior is a very very good sign, in fact!  That means they are feeling comfortable in their surroundings.  A comfortable kid is one ready to laugh and learn and have a great time.  A comfortable kid is a wonderful companion.  A comfortable child still needs some guidance and direction on how to act in a museum for the respect of the objects, the other visitors, and their own experience.

A child sees on a different level.  I am stating the obvious here, as I am apt to do.  They see on a different level in part because they are shorter.  We adults walk around with our heads several feet higher and our minds often on another plane again (at least I feel distracted or multi-tasking so much of my day that thinking of how a child sees something is not the first response to a situation).  Children see differently developmentally as well, a vision that shifts so rapidly as they grow and mature.

One of my favorite moments of realizing how different a child's visual perspective truly is was when I was about eight months pregnant with my third.  I was unloading my camera of its contents and found a picture that my five year old son had taken one afternoon when I handed the camera to him to try.  He had captured--in all its glory--my belly from his eye-level.  And what a belly it was!  I know I looked in the mirror every morning and felt very large with child, but to him, woah!  That increasingly large part of mommy was taking over the mommy he knew.  It was taking over his lap space, his usually energetic mommy, the attention of all the adults around him.  No wonder there were increasing melt-downs.  I understood all this in some degree before, but after seeing that picture, bam.  I just got it.  I got down on his level by seeing through his eyes and I felt empathy.

Since then I've tried more in every day life to get down on my child's level--literally and figuratively.  As the museum world has become more of an extension of my every day world (though there is still some mystical, special quality to the space I just can't describe) I've been able to see that children see objects--usually displayed up high to accommodate the adult's comfortable viewing perspective--from a different place.  An adult simply sees on one level and children see on a different.  The key is to bridge that gap in one way or another. 

Sometimes, of course, I lift them up.  They love that!  (I see another tip and trick coming on . . .)

But mostly I get down with them.  On the floor if necessary.  I see how they see something.  I see what they are pointing to.  They see what I am directing their attention toward.  We talk together.  We think together.  We linger a little longer.  It's as relaxing and enjoyable as reading a story or setting up a train track for those precious minutes.  I never cease to be humbled by the sublime grandeur of objects and my children's insight when I am crouched down on a level with them.

Please share with me if you have experienced an object from your child's perspective.  How's the view from down there?  Do you prefer to lift your child up to your level?  Does your child engage with you and the objects differently when the adult and child are on the same level?

Exhibition Highlight (and unabashed plug): Sacred Gifts, Brigham Young University

It's the eve of Good Friday and I'm in the Easter mood.

I spent most of the afternoon on the floor playing with my kids in our living room.  Up on the mantel--as yet unframed--is an 8x10 print of Franz Schwartz's Agony in the Garden.  I kept looking at this print today with Easter on my mind.  It is by no means as spectacular as the original, but it holds a dear place in my heart nonetheless.  

Every time I see it I am reminded of my introduction to the artist and his paintings, especially this one.

Last winter, as my accountant husband was in the throes of his busy season, I left him alone in Boston and took my kids across the country to stay with my family for a semester while I interned as a curator's assistant at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art.  The internship is a requirement in Harvard's Museum Studies program and honestly I was not sure how my family and I were going to swing it.  It all worked out wonderfully in the end, and I had the supreme blessing of working with Dawn Pheysey, then the Religious Art Curator.  She had been instrumental in creating the Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand exhibition a few years ago and was preparing for a sort of follow-up/expanding exhibition involving the religious art of Bloch and several of his contemporaries.  I was taken on to assist in research and label text drafting artworks and background in what has come to fruition in Sacred Gifts.

I'm sure I will talk more about all this in due time.  It was a huge learning and growing time for me and my views on museums and their relationship/resource to my family.  But for now I just wanted to give a teensy background into why I am saying--get to this exhibition!!

If you can at all, get to this exhibition.  It will strengthen your faith in God and great art if you've got a kindling.  It will restore your faith in God and great art if you're in doubt.  It will magnify your faith in God and great art if you're already on fire.

If you've already been, go again during this Easter season!  If it's your first time, there is no better time!  The final weeks of the exhibition are approaching, and some of the artworks will never again be on exhibition at BYU (and likely anywhere but their home location in Europe).  Prints do not do any of these justice.  You may think you've seen a Bloch but until you see one in person you just don't know what you're missing!

And the iPad is awesome.  My dad and son agree, so there's all the reason you need for seeing the exhibition several times--once without to just soak in the art itself, once with the iPad to enjoy the extra features, once while your kids hog it the whole time . . .

Plus **bonus** you'll get to read some of the words I wrote.  :D  I mean, I guess if you got this far you're already reading what I'm writing.  But this is just me barfing up words into a blog post.  The words on the wall (as it were) were highly researched, thought-out, weighed, edited in collaboration with Ms. Pheysey and others, and printed VERY BIG and all official on the wall.  It's a tad exciting, no?

I would absolutely love to hear what you thought of this exhibition if you were able to see it, or even read about it in an article somewhere.  Did you learn anything?  Did your kids recognize Jesus, though he may look different in some of the images than we are used to?  What gifts do you recognize in this Easter season?

Book Review: My Visit to the Dinosaurs by Aliki

My Visit to the Dinosaurs by Aliki

3:  I loved to see the KING of the dinosaurs.  I like the T-Rex. 

5:  My favorite part is when I saw the T-Rex.   I’ve seen bones stuck together with wire like the ones in the book.

M:  This book is a little bit old fashioned and I imagine a tad out of date of the current research on dinosaurs.  I’m no expert on dinosaurs, however, so I’m not sure how exact and up-to-date or not the information is.  Overall it seemed mostly accurate according to my knowledge.   The illustrations are pleasant, in any case, and the child’s reaction natural to a new museum experience.  At first curious but a little wary, at the end confident.  The book begins and ends in a dinosaur museum with dinosaur skeletons exhibited, but each dinosaur is highlighted with an illustration as the artist imagines the dinosaur would have looked in life.

Probably enjoyed most by children 4 and up

An additional dinosaur (though not museum-related, per se) book we’ve found and loved is I Am a Tyrannosaurus by Anna Grossnickle Hines.  We first found this book a year or so ago in the methodical way I find most of my books at the library: I follow my toddler around and pick up the books they toss off the shelf and onto the floor.  I Am a Tyrannosaurus shows a child pretending to be various dinosaurs and the illustrations are charming (I’m a sucker for kids in rain boots ala Christopher Robin).  It’s easy to mimic the actions and sounds to pretend to be the dinosaur as well.

Enjoyed by children 18 months and up

Small Yet Mighty (Just Another Museum Visit)

There is something about a small museum that appeals to my family.  I think the kids feel comfortable in a space that is more scaled to the familiar size.  Small means they (and we parents) can wander a bit but not feel at risk of getting lost.  Smaller means less general museum fatigue.  We leave the museum feeling more invigorated, though often we spend just the same amount of time as a larger institution.  Seriously--my kids go around and around the museum in a loop.  So we end up spending our usual 45 minutes, just in less square footage.

The smallness of a museum is not always to be confused with the smallness of its collection and exhibition.  Even in four galleries, a museum could display some remarkable specimens and information.  The exhibit area could be spacious yet full, thorough but not overwhelming or crowded.  I feel I'm speaking in silly hypothetical here ("it could possibly," etc.), but we've experienced a place where this is all absolutely happening.

The Brigham Young University Paleontology Museum (aka the dinosaur museum) is just such a perfect-sized museum with an excellent collection and exhibition design.  We have made it almost a tradition to visit this museum when visiting my family.  It had been an entire year since going to the museum with my then-four and two-year-olds, but when I mentioned visiting grandparents to my now-five-year-old he asked excitedly, "Are we going to go to the dinosaur museum?"  With a request like that how could we deny him?  So yes, yes, we went.

This view captures about a quarter of the museum.  I centered the lovely predator, but there are several more large, complete (or as good as) skeletons to the right of the me-holding-the-camera, behind me, to the left of me in the next gallery.  So, tons of awesome fossils and old bones for the kids (of all ages) to enjoy.

I hope I'm remembering right, as I'm not checking my facts here (for shame, wannabe academic!), but when I was a kid my parents would take me to a game or event at the athletic stadium at BYU and point to a massive area under the bleachers and say, "that's where they keep all the dinosaur bones!"  As we were always at the stadium at night it was kind of creepy thinking about all those old bones piled up in a dark and cold storage room.  And I may have had a nightmare or two about that.  When awake I thought it was awesome and would sometimes think about what would happen when someday the boxes of bones were taken out and opened.  I imagined great wooden crates with old packing material.  Had I seen Indiana Jones by the time I was ten?  I don't know, but that's what I imagined.

Some of those crates must still be being opened.  Or new specimens are arriving into the collection.  Either way (or likely both) we get to see some of the behind-the-scenes action from the comfort of the gallery.  A wall of glass allows us to see into the cleaning room and each time I have visited there has been a student or two working away at a big bone part or fossil remnant.

Can't resist a mommy and me museum moment photo-op with some hand-horns.

Each of the four galleries had at least one station for hands-on touching of fossils, petrified tree bits, dinosaur bones.  I didn't get any shots of the kids' cute hands touching the stuff, but I have lots of those like from other museum visits in my files for later.  Don't you worry 'bout that.

How can you not love a museum with a sense of humor?  All the labels had helpful phonetics so we could sound out the name of a creature when our kids asked.  This was our favorite for obvious reasons.

 

I leave you with this marvelous profile.  Hope there are no nightmares resulting from it.  Tell me, friends, have you been to a dinosaur museum recently?   What was your kid's favorite part?  Counting the teeth?  Trying to pronounce those names?  I'd love to hear all about it!

Tip #12 for Visiting the Museum with Young Children: Use a Map

 

On those (now rare) occasions when I visit a museum by myself I go back and forth on whether to use a map or not.  Many times I'm in the mood to just explore and wander aimlessly--even getting lost can be the highlight of a visit if I turn a corner I've never known existed and find an object I've never seen.  I figure I can find a map later or just ask for directions if I'm truly unsure of where to go next.  I guess I like to pretend I'm more relaxed and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants than I actually am.  At least for an hour in a beautifully clean and ordered space.

When I visit with kids and we pass the rack with maps it is almost impossible to talk them out of immediately grabbing a map and hitting their brother with it.  Not that I'm speaking from personal experience on that last part. 

So I acquiesce and the map (or several copies) get thrown on top of the stroller canopy and off we go. And it turns out those maps have come in handy half way through.  I've been known to hand a restless baby a map for a few precious entertained minutes.  I've used a good map for a spontaneous matching game.  I've handed over a pencil dug from the bottom of the diaper bag to an older toddler for some sketching on the back of a map sheet. 

And now my older two children are old enough to be intrigued on how a map actually works!

This brings us to my (in no particular order) list of tips and tricks for making a museum visit a success.  Number 12 (again, in no particular order--I just like to have random numbers in here to make it seem all official) is Use a Map with Your Child in Command.  Da-da-da-dum!

Make a kid the leader and boy, have you got yourself a recipe for a happy visit. 

Let me repeat.  The kid is the boss of where you go.  When you go.  And you follow.  It's absolutely great, I assure you.

My boys love to spread out the map and see which colors/sections/numbers/rooms they want to visit first.  Honestly, we may never actually make it there, depending on the size of the museum and what distracts us along the way.  But the simple fact that they are in charge . . . whew!  That means visiting the museum is the coolest field trip in town. 

And if we get desperate, we can always fold a paper airplane to fly in the atrium.  Staying far away from that very large and very pointy and very breakable glass sculpture.

And off we go!

Let me know how it goes for you on your next museum visit if you give this tip a try!  Does your child like to be in charge?  Do you follow the map exactly, or use it as a vague reference?  Does a nice older lady stop and tell you your baby has a wad of inked-up paper in their fist when you're just trying to enjoy those last few quiet seconds?  I'd love to hear any and all anecdotes!

Book Review: Visiting the Art Museum by Laurene Krasney Brown and Marc Brown

Visiting the Art Museum by Laurene Krasney Brown and Marc Brown

Mommy: This is one of the first museum books we acquired and it remains a favorite.  I appreciate the lively and quite realistic family romp through an art museum.  Each character has a wonderful personality--both members of the main family and the other visitors we meet while meandering through the galleries.  While the story is told through cartoonish drawings, the artworks are represented true to life.  The story is told through bubble quotes, but I find my children and I fill in the narration with our own observations and commentary.  At the end of the book are more details on each of the galleries and artworks featured, as well as great tips for visiting the museum with a family group.

5-year-old:  I liked when the dad was pulling the kid away from the TV because they were going to the museum.  And at the museum when the girl said she had to go to the bathroom.  Sometimes that happens to us at the museum.  I liked the part with the costume and the mummy.  I have another favorite part—I liked the part with the naked Frisbee-er.

3-year-old:  Yeah, I liked the part when they saw the shark picture like we have at our museum.  

(The Mommy will insert context to the three-year-old's commentary:  "our museum" is the MFA Boston where we go several times a month and "the shark picture" is Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley.  There are three versions of this painting.  The original (of three) is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the third is in the American Art wing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  For more on this painting and its story see the National Gallery's informative page here.  And I guarantee that this shark painting will make other appearances in the future.  My boys are obsessed and fascinated by it!)

probably enjoyed most by children ages 3+