Education and Community Programs

One of my favorite art bloggers, Edward Winkleman, posted on a gallery’s responsibility is to warn visitors before they enter a potentially upsetting exhibition. Like many museum and gallery people, he’s waffling on the issue: he can see that parents might appreciate knowing in advance that an exhibition includes “mature” content, but he also makes this very valid point:

The main problem with warning signs, of course, is how they frame the work before the viewer encounters it, setting up a predetermined context in which the viewer should approach it. In other words, the viewer is not permitted to make up their own mind about the work, free of the institution’s instruction.

He argues that a sign puts visitors in a position of entering the gallery with their defenses up — I agree. But - - on the other hand, I wonder if for a lot of parents, any show at a contemporary art museum would get their defenses up. Would you be more on guard with no signs, and no guidance on what to expect, or with signs at the entrance to each potentially upsetting gallery?

One of the bloggers on Babble, the painfully hip online magazine for a “new generation of parents” (that I read constantly), writes fairly frequently about taking his kids to museums. The blogger, Trey Ellis, is a single dad in Manhattan with two kids. He recently wrote about taking the kids to the Murakami exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. He didn’t have any warning about the content of the exhibition, which includes sculptures of “a Japanese girl jumping a rope created by milk spurting from her gargantuan breasts” (according to the Brooklyn Museum) and a naked young man with an erect penis. Read his post about the visit — it seems he was able to navigate the visit pretty gracefully. He answered his kids’ questions directly and simply, and he asked them questions, which probably gave him a good idea of where they were in their understanding. And they all had a good giggle.

Recently the Walker education department invited a group of parents to visit the Richard Prince exhibition, in hopes of getting some ideas from parents about how we make decisions about what exhibitions are appropriate for our kids.

One of the things we talked about was whether a sign suggesting parents preview the exhibition before bringing their children is helpful. Most of the parents in the group strongly supported the idea - it seems only fair, and really helpful, to parents to let them know that the gallery might include some art that may not be appropriate for kids.

I have to admit I'm not sure what I think about this. I visited the contemporary art museum in Chicago over the weekend. They had a warning sign outside one exhibition, and I confess I went through the gallery looking for the naked people or violence or whatever had inspired the sign. I did see a couple of blurry breasts, but that was about it. And then I realized that was not such a great way to experience an exhibition.

On the other hand, I know plenty of people who think contemporary artists - and contemporary art venues - are out to trick or embarrass or horrify their audiences, and who would really appreciate knowing in advance in a particular exhibition might not be great for kids.

Does a warning sign help a parent feel that the museum is on their side? Or do warning signs reinforce the idea that the contemporary museum is packed full of offensive art? Where are warning signs appropriate? If we want the Walker to warn us, do we also expect to see signs in galleries of Greek and Roman vases, or of 19th century paintings? Any thoughts?

I remember doing tons of art projects at home when I was growing up. We’d roll out printing ink on the kitchen counter with a breyer to make prints, and I imagined that I’d be doing art projects all the time at home with my kids. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Six-year-old O does like to make things, but they’re often utilitarian: he has me help him cut doors and windows in a toaster box, but he’s not interested in decorating it. Once he can drive a truck into it, it is done.

Re-reading an old (Winter 2002/03) issue of Cabinet magazine, I found a nice article by artist Byron Kim about his struggles with doing an art project with his kids. Here’s a bit of what he wrote:

Whenever we set aside time to make something, it didn’t quite work. She tried her best and that was just the problem. Our attempts were too intentional, too full of effort. I found myself foisting my ideas on Ella, and she, in turn, kept trying to make Art.

This sounds familiar — I wonder if it resonates with other parents out there. O likes doing arts & crafts projects — and has a kid’s digital camera that he likes to use — but, yeah, when the projects seem labored, they really do seem like they’re more my idea than his.

Writing for the Guardian Unlimited Arts Blog, a rather crochety Nicholas Blincoe complains about the “infantalization” of British museums. He writes,

“I used to take pleasure visiting museums on trips around Britain, but now I am so clearly out-of-place: like Godzilla, a huge hulking man looming above the children. Our galleries and museums have been turned into playgrounds, with activity sheets and treasure trails, interactive video games and coloured signs that tell you about the exhibits in a few simple sentences, but nothing that an educated adult would not already know.”

Here’s the link to the article. What do you think? I appreciate it when museums have stuff for kids, in part because gallery activities and kid-friendly information in the galleries make visits more bearable for the whole family (and any hulking Godzillas who happen to be in the vicinity), but I agree that not everything needs to be turned into a cartoon character. And I love visiting what he calls “unmodernised museums: the museums that look like museums. I like them Victorian, cranky and encyclopedic,” (and so do my kids!) We promise not to swamp the place.

I’d love to come up with a top ten, but five’s about all I can manage. Here’s my list:

1. Free Admission — So much of the stress of visiting museums vanishes when we get in free. It doesn’t matter how long we stay, or if we visit an exhibition for the third time and ignore everything else. Its okay if we just walk through the galleries on the way to caffeine and a cookie. Some museums are free all the time; others are free just certain days or times; memberships get you in free any time. We just (finally) renewed our Walker membership: it is a bunch to pay up front, but it is worth it for visits unencumbered by the price of a ticket.

2. Oudry’s Painted Menagerie exhibition at the Getty Center, Los Angeles – This exhibition was an obvious one for kids — life-size paintings of snarling leopards, growling hyenas, and, the star of the show, Clara the rhinoceros. Yes, the animal paintings were great, but it was also nice to see Oudry’s sketches. Some were unfinished, some were not so great, and it was a opportunity to show O. that even the artist who made these beautiful paintings had to try and try again.

3. Not Making Everything Completely Obvious — Stuff in museum exhibitions is there to be seen, but it can be nice to have experiences with things that aren’t so obvious. At the museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, Oskar was wowed by the models of ancient creatures, but he was also mesmerized by a little box of tiny bones (of mice?) on display in a visible work area of the museum. They looked like crumbs or specks of dirt, with just a little card identifying them. It was like making a discovery. See also: Tino Sehgal’s work currently at the Walker.

4. Jaques Tati - Mon Oncle (1958) – This is such a sweet, funny film. It is also beautifully shot and visually clever. I’ve watched it many times, and we finally watched with our 5-year-old and he loved it. The visual humor was perfect for him — and he still mentions the kitchen scene every once in a while.

5. Meat for Breakfast??!!?? - Picasso & American Art was the sleeper hit with the kids this year. I thought it would be strictly a quick walk-through when we took O., but there was a bunch there he liked. In particular, O. thought the Tom Wesselmann Still Life #30 was awesome. Those bottles look REAL! The artist used a REAL refrigerator door! Some parts are painted and some are pictures! And, perhaps the biggest surprise of all: meat with cereal. Who would ever have meat with breakfast? Crazy. Image from MOMA.

I am always interested in how artists - especially artists who are mothers - figure out how to balance art, home, and a job. My friend Kara Walker-Tome and I went to graduate school together -she was always ambitious, organized, and energetic. Now, she's raising two kids and working as an independent curator organizing temporary exhibitions in non-traditional spaces (Here's her website for ShowTel). When I heard she was planning a new project (read an article on 10 x 10) just months after the birth of her second baby, I thought I'd interview her about how she finds - or doesn't find - balance.

It sounds like your recent curatorial project went well. With finite amounts of time and energy (and lots of demands on both) how did you make that happen?

With 10 x 10, I was sensible enough to know going in that I should make it a manageable project as I have very little time to devote to my work with the demands of a nine-year-old and a one-year-old. Also my husband's current job requires a lot of his attention, so he is not very available for "kid time" nor I do have much extended family support.

So I made decisions like using a smaller group of artists, inviting only artists I have worked with in the past that I know are responsible, doing minimal press and promotion and being OK with knowing the crowd might be smaller than other shows I have done, etc. I also had to scale down certain aspects and details along the way in direct proportion to the amount of time I could eek out.

Do you feel like you can keep current & active in your profession, while balancing your curatorial projects with your home life?

With this recent project, I definitely fretted that I wasn't being as "professional" and that it would affect the show. In retrospect, I realized that no one noticed any of the little imperfections I was stressing about and overall the show turned out wonderfully. That was a good lesson for me and it renewed my confidence, which in turn helped me decide to commit to my next project.

Are your decisions about taking on projects influenced more by practical factors (like finding child care) or internal ones (like your desires to be home for your kids and to be active in your career)? Or??

This is an opportune time to ask me about "balancing" family and work life. In April I will curate the sixth installment of a show I had done annually until taking last year off after having my baby. Showtel will involve 30-40 artists doing site-specific work, a printed catalogue, sponsors and an estimated crowd of 600-800. A lot of work!

I know I will have to put out some money for daycare in order to make this show happen. I'll consider it an investment against the show. Luckily I also feel my daughter is ready for daycare and I was referred to a sitter I like and trust.

I am nervous about pulling it off but I also feel compelled to jump in and do it and I am excited about it.

All this balancing and strategizing and compromising - is it worth it?

I'd like to openly bash the concept of "balancing" motherhood and work...it's not possible! In my opinion and experience "balance" implies an evenness that just doesn't happen. One side of the scale is always heavier than the other and the sides are always switching! The really challenging part is acknowledging that you are being pulled towards one or the other ... As long as you are giving your best to each SOME of the time, that should be the goal.

I've been reading reviews of The Daring Book for Girls, which is billed as "every girl's invitation to adventure." The consensus seems to be that pop culture provides pretty grim models for young girls and that this book is all about active adventures, positive women role models, and creative craft projects for 'tweens.

I started to wonder what a “Daring Art Book for Kids” would look like. Plenty of artists are making work that is fun and adventurous, and could provide kids with positive role models. Here's my completely arbitrary stab at a list (feel free to add your favorite artists in the comments!)

Ingrid Calame A friend recently pointed out that, while Ingrid is brilliant and makes interesting work, she's really doing what we all loved doing when we were kids: tracing and coloring. But she traces things like the stains and tire tracks on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a 76-by-20-foot painting for an exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. (See images of her paintings here.)
David Wilson & The Museum of Jurassic Technology David Wilson runs the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a place that is both wonderful and awesome - in both the new- and old-school meanings of those words. I'm crushed when my kid announces "I'm bored" when, as the Museum demonstrates, there are all kinds of things in the world, great and small, that can inspire wonder and curiosity.
Lee Bontecou We often assume everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, but Lee Bontecou's life offers an alternative I hope will appeal to my kids. She received critical acclaim for her work in the 1960s and 70s, then didn't show for decades, focusing instead on teaching and making work in her studio. Visiting her retrospective, I felt like I was getting a glimpse of what it means to make art and work hard because you love it.

Thursday nights at the Walker are more blind date than play date, but we took Baby J and O to see the Brave New Worlds exhibition last Thursday and had a nice time. I previewed the show before we took the kids, and was happy to find more than a few things a five-year-old could appreciate.

If you're thinking of visiting Brave New Worlds with kids, here are a few things my kids liked. Maybe yours will like them, too.

The curious origami figures, puffs of fog, and blinking lights in one section of Haegue Yang's Blind Room reminded O of an airport. The materials were (relatively) common - mini blinds, clumps of mini lights - but from kid's-eye-view, it must have looked magical.

We spent a long time in Artur Zmijewski's installation of three videos that document the daily grind of three women workers in Poland. Regular life in a house and at a job- with similarities to and differences from O's regular life in our American house.

We were all spell-bound by Runa Islam's Time Lines which combines shots of real tourist attractions with footage of models of the rides. O got a little impatient with the long shots of the cables moving against the blue of the sky - but stuck with it. The suspense - Where's the car going? Where's the tower? What are those people waiting for? - kept him watching.

The big messages of the show - what it means for artists to be politically responsible, how artists address the complexities of our "brave new worlds"- mostly escaped our little group. But I like that O got a bit of perspective on how people live and work in other parts of the world. And I liked that it didn't take a cartoon character, frenetic action, or wacky dialogue (all staples of children's media) to get him interested.

O. is a pretty cautious kid. So cautious, he's afraid to walk on the stairs below Claes Oldenburg's Three-Way Plug - Scale A, Soft, Brown. We always have to take the elevator. This makes me wonder, what's the best way to deal when a kid is afraid of a work of art?

My friend Natalie is a Ph D. candidate in applied child development at Tufts, and is interested in how kids deal with stressful situations. I asked her a few questions about how to talk with kids about scary artworks.

How do kids experience works of art?
I was remembering seeing a boy respond with such a powerful expression to a sculpture of a face when he was four years old. And watching my niece and nephew recently in a sculpture garden - they do seem to respond with their entire bodies to certain artworks. [They respond] very immediately and intensely

What are some strategies for talking to a kid who is afraid of an artwork?
I think the main thing is to acknowledge his fears and anxieties and find a way to let him express his reactions. When kids (or adults) look fine but are suppressing what they feel, there's often a rebound at some point. Trying to stop thinking about something can lead to focusing on it even more.

Redirect her attention: "Remember your birthday when we made those puppets..." or, "Is this where we saw that sculpture of the giant mouse?" This can help a kid get a better perspective on what she's seeing and relieve some of the anxiety.

Reappraise the scary experience: "It's just an actor pretending to be hurt..." But don't minimize what the child is feeling. Even if it is just an artwork, the emotions are very real, and coming from a real experience

I don't always want to make a big deal about things. What about dismissing fears, or saying, "that's not real, that's just a picture"?
You don't want to simply dismiss fears, but isn't good to get stuck thinking over and over about a negative experience, either. So distraction and reappraisal - as well as acceptance - are considered healthy ways to deal with negative emotions.

Thanks, Natalie!

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So, should I make O walk down the stairs under the giant soft plug, or should we keep taking the elevator?

A few days ago, O. asked about "that show with all those clothes on the floor." Turns out he's thinking about Kai Althoff's installation in Heart of Darkness, an exhibition we saw nearly a year ago.

O can watch a video or read a book over and over, and enjoy it as much the 30th time as the first. I've always assumed kids take pleasure in the familiar and predictable - and that's why I have Cars and Trucks and Things that Go memorized. So why did this installation- which we saw only once - stick in his head?

Althoff's installation was (to me) chaotic and creepy - the Walker website more eloquently describes it as a "sovereign land where bourgeois codes of order, tidiness, and beauty are suspended." Nothing about the exhibition seemed especially appropriate for kids, but maybe that's what made it stick. As a five-year-old figuring out the world, O is deeply invested in "bourgeois codes of order." He wants to know what the rules are, how things work, what to expect.

So I am still curious why he remembered - and wanted to talk about - this installation. Maybe the exhibition was a safe place to experience disorder and messiness. Littered with toys and clothes and crazy craft materials, maybe it looked like a place where adult rules had been abandoned. Maybe it was scary - or maybe it just looked like fun.

Oskar, June and I checked out the last Arty Pants Tuesday Playdate. J. slept most of the time and O. was happy to have some attention. We had such a nice, low-key visit, and I realized later that its the practical stuff that can make or break a visit. Here are three things I especially appreciated.

1. The window wall along Hennepin Avenue is a treat. During Arty Pants, they had squares of carpeting and little scraps of fabric you could use to build your own cityscape while looking out at the real city.
2. The chocolate-chip cookies in the café come in packages of four small cookies. No arguments about how to divide up a single gigantic treat: each person gets her or his very own reasonably-sized cookie.
3. The family restroom on the lower level (in the old section of the building) is large enough - there's room for a kid and a stroller - and there's a trash can next to the changing station. And there are lockers nearby.

I don't want this to sound like Mommy's trip to the museum is all about snacktime and changing stations, but here's the deal. When those practical things are easy - when it doesn't take six hands to change a diaper and I'm not faced with offering a hungry kid a cookie the size of his head because I forgot to bring snacks - it makes enjoying the art easy.

I know my kid, and I know the Walker collection pretty well, so I should be able to predict what's going to appeal to him. I don't always get it right. Here are a few surprise favorites:

What I Thought Would be Fun: Claes Oldenburg's bright yellow, giant-sized Geometric Mouse on the terrace outside Gallery 8.
What Really was Fun: Sol Lewitt's room-size paintings of geometric shapes that cover the walls inside the café.
Why? O. liked the mouse, but wasn't wowed by it. He was learning his shapes at school, so circles, squares, and triangles were a big deal in his world. It was exciting for him to see the shapes writ large and to realize that a grown-up artist liked them as much as he did.

What I Thought Would be Fun: Sigmar Polke's fairy-tale painting of falling snow, Mrs. Autumn and Her Two Daughters.
What Really was Fun: Julie Mehretu's super-detailed painting, Babel Unleashed.
Why? Like many kids, O. loves maps and aerial views and is crazy about airports and construction sites. While it looks unfamiliar and chaotic from a distance, up close, Mehretu's painting is packed with details that O. finds fascinating. It was like a super-sized seek-and-find puzzle.

What I Thought Would be Fun: Dolphin Oracle II, the interactive talking dolphin by Piotr Szyhalski and Richard Shelton.
What Really was Fun: Dolphin Oracle II, the interactive talking dolphin by Piotr Szyhalski and Richard Shelton.
Why? It's an interactive talking dolphin.

I am five years and two kids into being an artist and a parent, and I still wonder if it is really possible - or advisable - to pursue an art career. Considering the demands on my attention and time, should I really be spending much of either on my art? I was curious about how other mom/artists I know navigate the often-conflicting demands of domestic and artistic life.

Images by Beth Dow (L) and Jessica Rath (R)

I emailed questions about the art/life puzzle to two friends: Jessica Rath, a mother-to-be and LA-based artist with an upcoming exhibition at the Torrance Art Museum, and Beth Dow, parent of a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year old, who recently had a solo exhibition at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis. Here are some excerpts from our conversations.

Margaret (MPG) Jessica, what are you thinking - will it be possible to combine art & motherhood?

Jessica (JR): I never thought I would have children. I decided in my 20s that first I wanted to make art, then it would be nice to find a partner and then, only if the partner was mature enough and ready to do 50% of child care, would I even consider children. Frankly through my 20s, this seemed like an impossibility. I would say this is very much a team effort between myself and Joe, my husband, who has a low maintenance day job and runs our household. We discuss and adjust our time schedules to make as much room for my studio practice as possible, while I hold down two part time jobs. It will be possible, but I will have to continue to make it a priority and will need reassurance from my partner that this road is something he supports.

(more…)

We visited the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this afternoon. The museum was full of fun activities for kids, but the thing that caught the five-year-old's eye was an exhibition of Ed Rusha's Stains (1969), a collection of 75 sheets of white paper, each stained with a different substance, from apple juice to vaseline to bleach.

I like Ed Ruscha's work, but didn't expect rows of mostly-white pieces of paper to be a real crowd-pleaser. I underestimated the depth of a five-year-old's fascination with the messy and the accidental.

At home we're always tidying things up. Accidents happen — glasses of juice tip over, popsicles drip down a shirt, milk splashes out of the cereal bowl - and we grab a napkin or a sponge or a roll of paper towels. But here was a whole gallery of spills that didn't get cleaned up: egg yolks, urine, sulfuric acid that actually burned the paper. He was fascinated and asked his dad to read what made each one of the stains. At bedtime, O talked about stains/Stains again. What about chocolate, daddy? What about melted chocolate?

I'm curious. Museums often create small displays or set up special activities just for kids. Some exhibitions are obviously kid magnets. But what exhibits or artworks have your kids loved that you never would have expected?

By the way, don't squeeze the juice box. After twenty-plus years, the apple juice stain turned a nasty dark brown.