Kids and art museums: Oil and water or chocolate chips and cookies?

I have no idea what age I was the first time I was hauled museum to the, it was NYC in the 50s, the 1950s there were museums with art, I'm sure I was there.

Since I donuts remember when I first went, there's no way I can offer an impression, I also don't know if it was an Impressionist exhibition. I was probably .k. by it, pictures, colors it would have been exciting like opening a storybook with pictures/drawings in it.

Later when in school, during city stays we went to museums, I remember the sheer horror followed by delight when we ended up at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art instead of The Museum of Natural History (that may have been the 3rd grade with the teacher who had a new poem us learn each month and a piece of artwork).

I'm not a parent (sigh of relief).
An ideal age to start them there is unknown, children mature at different rates and have different interests. Debbie might love sculpture and hate Van Gogh
while Ralphie may love Van Gogh and detest sculpture. Each kid is different age both for and interests.

I've no problem with museums going after children and their parents to be patrons. The budget cuts make it so schools can't afford to educate these children about art. Same as for music, if Lincoln Center wants to go after families to entice children, then it's good to me. In grade school at one point when back in the city, I was given a ticket to a local amatuer production of The Barber of Seville, at the local college, it introduced me to live theater, I was 10 or 11 at the time. So, yes, museums and other arts segments (theater, music, dance, literature [library]) should come after families and even offer discount rates for them.

General children in ate reasonably well behaved in museums and don't get excessively loud. My theory is the high ceilings, weird lights and marble floors freak them out into a peculiar haze. Take them to storefront galleries like the ones in Chelsea they are not as well behaved. Let the museums after the children and parents come, teach the little ones. tools, Give them the and they can then pass that rich history on to the next generation sharing what touched them most.

I have little recollection how young I was the first time I visited an art museum. Growing up in the 1970's and 1980's I can recall with a greater ease going to the Boston Museum of Science with my father and sisters.

As for an art museum? I believe I was in high school when I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with my French class. Whether it was the first time I have been to an art museum or the first time an art museum made an impression on me as an individual only hypnosis will drag out the actual memory out of me.


Clever how things might have worked out that way. For my initial high school French trip, we would have gone to see the Impressionist paintings on permanent display in the MFA. They seem to be also the most accessible works of art in these style of large scale museums.

And forgive my extension of the pun, they tend to make the greatest impression on the young and young at mind especially when it's the first major form/movement of art one's is introduced to.


So true. Children develop so differently that this applies to all forms of culture. When is the best time to introduce a child to certain books, movies, etc.... It's all an individual case by case basis.


Great way of expressing this plausible truth. This grand scale museums have an overwhelming atmosphere of being a cathedral of culture which most kids seem to instinctively recognize at the onset. I never met a wound up kid in a museum as they seemed mummified in this peculiar haze for good or for bad.


Galleries aren't presented in a kid friendly fashion so the more accessible these large scale/survey museums are too the next generation of possible art goers the better it is for the whole population of art goers in the future of the survival of the art world itself.

I don't remember how old I was when I first visited an art museum, but I do remember that it was a school function, probably 4th or 5th grade.

My daughter was 5 or 6 years old when we first went to an anthropological museum and afterwards entered the art museum next door. Just for fun I thought but the kid was genuinely interested and so we marched through all the exhibits and talked about the paintings, what she liked and what not and why...

There is no need to explain to a kid of that age who the painter was and how
famous he was - just having them absorb the painting itself and ask them questions is enough to spark their interest.

Naturally, a museum shouldn't be a form of "free childcare" - that's plain rude!

I never seen packs of wild children roaming the halls and galleries of these grand scale art museums so we don't have to worry about being mauled by free roaming predatory pack of children in these places.

I grew up with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center -- I don't remember when I first went, but my earliest memories are of already being comfortable with them. I liked both of them a lot.

One of my earliest memories of a museum visit as a kid was to the Natural Sciences museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The reason I remember it so clearly is when we were visiting the hippopotamus exhibit, there was this huge hippo eating a head of lettuce and in the process of letting her **** hit the fan. Her tail was spinning like a propeller spraying everyone and everything with it. It went on for several minutes and I can still see it all very clearly in my memory as if it were yesterday. It was hilarious!

We visited art and history museums quite frequently when we were kids, both as family outing and as school field trips.

One that stands out in my mind is the San Jose Winchester Mystery House.

Really learning the aftereffects of the cliche when the s**t hits the fan at such a young age.