Apropos of my post about kids and art, Daddy Types describes an art outing gone sour at the National Gallery. The first part of the post is an excellent example of how to share art with your children. For example:

Taking the kid to see art, contemporary or otherwise, just seems like the most natural thing in the world to me. The scale, the abstraction, the diversity, it all seems perfect for engaging a little kids attention, far more than traditional paintings-in-a-frame galleries, which are usually too high and too small for a knee-high or stroller-bound kid to even see. And kids dont have a prejudice that art has to be “about” something; visual interest, stimulation, and discovery are often plenty to make a work a success.

[The artist] Louis made his giant, abstract works by pouring and channeling paint across his canvas. The kid was fascinated at the idea, and would pick out the colors and the overlaps, and she asked questions that frankly stump art historians, like how did he keep the paint from splashing, and how did he make straight lines? [Louis didn’t let people watch him paint, even his wife, so the specific secrets of his techniques died with him.]

Alas, his experience is marred when he overhears a truly clueless tour group leader telling a group of children about a Clyfford Still painting.

“Who wonders why this is here? Who wonders why it’s even art?” She waits and waits for sheepish hands to keep rising.

“Well, there are curators–do you know what that is? art experts who study and know what art is important enough to be in a museum–curators and art historians and other experts who say this is art, and even if it doesn’t look like it’s about anything and it doesn’t make any sense, you just have to bear with it sometimes.

“You just have to bear with it sometimes”? That’s the message the National Gallery is sending kids about art? That there are experts who know and the rest of us have to bear with them?

There are ugly paintings and sculptures in the world. There are deliberately obscure and difficult works whose value isn’t immediately apparent. And there are works you don’t like, works that convey messages that are at odds with your values, works that are poorly executed and poorly conceived. Accepting art means accepting all these things, and using them as a stepping off point to ask “why?”

The tour group leader’s comments imply two things:

1. We must accept the curators’ judgment without question.
2. Art is boring and only experts understand it.

As Daddy Types suggests, this comment will assure that few, if any, of these students develop much of a relationship with art. Contrast this with his own approach, which encourages his daughter to approach art as a joyful, playful exercise, and to ask questions both silly and profound. There’s no attempt to force her to love, like, or respond in any particular way to an artwork or an artist — just to look and wonder. For the poor students in the National Gallery tour, the lesson is simple: respect the museum’s authority and keep your mouth (and mind) shut.

Which is really too bad. And all too common.

Related Posts

• Talking to Toddlers (and Other Small Children)
• The Upside of Educating
• Check This Out: Review of “The Read-Aloud Handbook”

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