
Agony to ecstasy: on taking children to museums - Thevet
http://www.intelligentlifemagazine.com/culture/authors-on-museums/agony-to-ecstasy
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wilwade
As someone who has also gone through all three stages, I think the key for
children is choosing the museums and exhibits that they or you like and
enjoying them instead of analyzing them.

For example, my 6 year old daughter enjoys the local art museum, but I don't
think she has looked at any one painting more than 5 seconds. As a parent you
have to be OK with missing out on a part of the experience for you and work on
the experience for your children. The specific experience I suggest focusing
on for young children is just enjoying it, or a specific part. Mostly that
means letting them go quickly by that masterpiece and asking what they like
about whatever they do stop to see.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That sounds sensible.

Kids - even bright kids - aren't going to be able to understand or appreciate
art the way adults do.

So I mostly agree with the article. Dragging kids around museums they're
visibly bored by to "improve" or "educate" them is a waste of time for
everyone.

I used to love the Science Museum in London as a kid, because there were
buttons to push and levers to play with and giant aeroplanes and spaceships.
And sometimes, computers.

As an adult I really enjoy art galleries (and science museums.) But I can't
imagine six year old me getting anything out of gallery visits at all. Art is
too abstract and emotionally complex for pre-teens, and the history to give it
a context is too distant from their experience.

~~~
eitally
You are free to correct me if I'm wrong, but in reading this I can't imagine
you have kids.

As someone who does, let me affirm that children absolutely get as much out of
gallery visits as adults do. It isn't a perfect overlay in subject matter, but
they learn as much as you or I. At pre-adult ages, exposure is as critical as
understanding, which will evolve only via experience.

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bprieto
I have taken my children to the Prado several times, and also to the Thyssen
and Reina Sofia. They enjoyed their visits, mostly because there were
specially made for kids: they had a guide for a group of 10-12 kids, the
visits had a theme like Greek mythology, and they only stopped in front of a
few paintings.

I liked the Thyssen visits the most: only 5-6 paintings with a common theme
like music, cities, people... and at the end the kids would do a craft based
on what they just saw. The guides took a socratic approach to the visits, so
instead of explaining they asked questions like What do you see here? Why did
the artist did that? Who is this person in the painting? Was he rich? Is she
happy?

We parents were with them but weren't allowed to speak before the kids, only
to help when they struggled with a question. It was delightful to see the
children's imagination run wild with their interpretation of the paintings.

Seeing only a few paintings but really being in front of them for a while was
a new experience for me, used to the common mindset of having to see all
paintings in a museum even if only for a few seconds.

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baldfat
My father has a extreemly high IQ and his favorite hobby is learning something
new. He is 77 years old and he still attends college classes at our state
college (Free for anyone over 65).

He took all 5 of his kids to a museum at least once a month. We would drive 3
or 4 hours and then get there when it opened and more than likely be there
when it closed. The number one person my dad would talk with was the security
people. His thought was they had no real knowledge of the subject and had to
work through all the steps so they can explain it better. He was right.

~~~
RankingMember
Maybe it was by virtue of you being his offspring that you could tolerate
that, but I can tell you that if I were his kid he'd have been dealing with a
seriously exasperated/cranky kid and would've started leaving me at home for
his all-day museum visits.

Even now, the idea of spending an entire day at a museum makes my brain's gag
reflex fire. Even for cool subjects that naturally interest me (history,
engineering), there's only so long I can mill around staring at things in a
receptive state before my brain says "ENOUGH".

~~~
baldfat
Well to be honest all 5 of use would NEVER complain. We would leave
restaurants and the people would say, "Oh your children are the best behaved
children I ever seen." We would say later on to ourselves, "They didn't know
what our father would threaten us with." He is a loving father but he would
make it SO NOT WORTH IT to complain or misbehave. My children love to learn
and don't complain but I don't threaten them :)

I think if you raise them to love what you do (For me it is learning, music
and food) they grow liking the same things. My 9 year old at Disney World
ordered the non-kid friendly Cheese Plate and the waiter sent out a second kid
friendly appetizer just to be safe. He later asked her what her favorite thing
she ate at Disney (Last night of 5 day stay) and she said the cheese plate.

~~~
jimbokun
The WORST part of my family's Disney experience was how the meal plan required
my younger son to order from the children's menu. My one son was 11, and the
other 9. The way the Disney meal plan works, 9 year-olds and under MUST order
from the child menu. We kept dragging our kids back to Epcot to eat at the
various nationality specific restaurants. Me, my wife, and older son would get
a menu with lots of interesting choices, my younger son got to pick from
chicken fingers or one other vaguely ethnic dish. He really hated being
discriminated against in this way.

The one server who really understood the problem was at Epcot's Italian
restaurant. We ordered various things, including one item from the children's
menu, but our waitress just served everything communally, with no mention of
what was the "child" item.

Sorry to vent, but you just triggered a painful parenting memory. :)

~~~
baldfat
We ran into the same thing, but my 9 year old got adults meals half the time
by us just asking. Also they feed enough for 1.5 people easily so my wife and
I would give her part of our own meals.

I went on a Make a Wish trip with my son when he was 9 and he got the adult
meal 100% of the time. Disney is awesome with Make a Wish kids.

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nlawalker
I was indoctrinated (with the best intentions) with a little bit of "museum
guilt" as a child - when I visit a place, I sure as hell better visit all the
big museums, as I needed to be a "citizen of the world" and it would be such a
shame if I went all the way to a place and didn't see the museums.

I started enjoying travel a lot more once I got out of this mindset.

For me, now, travel is about walking everywhere, soaking up and trying to
temporarily become one with the culture, people-watching and thinking about
what life is like in this place, trying the food, admiring the architecture,
breathing the air and just _being_ in another place. And visiting a museum or
two, when it makes sense, especially if it provides some historical context to
the place I'm in.

Sure, I'm not going to miss the Louvre or the National Gallery, but I'm not
going to make myself spend more than a few hours there because it's "required
viewing".

My 2 cents: By all means, visit museums. But don't make travel a negative
experience for yourself or your kids "because we just have to get all these
museums in".

~~~
mikeash
I would expand this a bit and say: there is no point in trying to appreciate
culture if you don't actually enjoy the experience. (And thus no point in
trying to have your children appreciate culture if _they_ don't enjoy it.)

It's sad that a lot of aspects of culture (art museums, plays, orchestral
music) have been labeled as boring, because people feel obligated to
experience them.

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cheriot
The museums with the most renown collections* are often the worst at telling
the story of why those artifacts are special. Great if you're a historian, a
useless collection of old broken things if you're a kid, and incompletely
impressive artifacts for laymen.

*I'm looking at you, British and Egyptian Museums.

Slowly, a handful of museums are catching on. The Holocaust museum in
Washington, DC may be the best use of a collection out there.

~~~
noxToken
Have you ever been on a guided tour? I know that museums shouldn't rely on
guided tours to be interesting, but for those museums that fail to capture a
wider audience, guided tours can be a godsend.

When I went to the National Cathedral, we didn't get nor want a guided tour.
The architecture was enough to keep us interested. There were enough tours
happening concurrently that we could weave about the cathedral at our own pace
while still getting most of the tour experience. For people without an
inherent interest in the cathedral or its architecture, the tours sounded
great. Perhaps the tours would be helpful for potentially interesting museums
with awfully boring experiences.

~~~
cheriot
That's a good suggestion. Guide quality runs the gambit so checking reviews of
the licensed guides for a particular museum can save a few bucks. I've had
guys recite the brochure and not even get it right.

Right now I'm taking the time consuming approach of reading a couple books on
major destinations and hoping for the best. Next up, A Short History of Laos:
The Land in Between.

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kingosticks
The majority of museums in London have extra resources for children and they
range from pretty poor 'trails'/paper-based games to interactive talks and
workshops targeted at particular age groups. What you get highly depends on
the people in charge at the particular institution. The goal of these
resources is to facilitate alternative interpretations to allow people of all
ages to appreciate the collection (and make maximum use of the funding). The
idea that all people, even across the same age group, interpret art in the
same way is wrong; the idea that one interpretation is better or more right
than another is also wrong. Fortunately there are now numerous ways to enjoy
museums and galleries and to 'drag' a child around is unlikely to be one of
them. Surely that's obvious.

~~~
germinalphrase
This idea of paper-based games is nice, but I hope they are slightly more
involved than [can you find five pictures with a donkey in them]. It would be
great (particularly at museums that focus on science, industry, etc.) if these
games implicitly motivated young people to draw connections between different
realms of knowledge.

For instance, the connection between transportation and resource extraction is
obvious to adults, but a young person may find it helpful if a paper-based
game motivated them to consider how the cool steam engines connect with the
coal mining exhibit.

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moomin
_sigh_ Point of Fact: Felipe II married Mary Tudor, not Mary, Queen of Scots.
How exactly did that get past the editors?

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angdis
It all depends on the individuals and what they're receptive to, regardless of
whether you're talking about kids OR adults.

Sure, some kids are going to have a meltdown if you drag them through MOMA.
Wait until they're older, or structure the experience with some preparation or
get professional help (kid-friendly tours).

I don't think that the great museums should bend-over-backwards to appease
cranky children. Many already do a great job providing age-appropriate
activities and that's enough. How much more do we need from these museums?

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nosuchthing
Kids would probably enjoy the interactive sculpture installations of a nice
playground like Dennis the Menace Park - or an interactive science museum
intended for all age audiences like the Exploratorium.

Depending on what age the kid is, a natural history musume or modern art
museum would probably be wiser than something full of oil paintings. Kids with
internet access have seen art. Show them the world, science, fun. Oil
paintings are not fun.

[http://exploratorium.edu](http://exploratorium.edu)

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navbaker
I was fortunate enough to grow up with the Smithsonian museums on the National
Mall within easy driving distance. Some of my best childhood memories are
seeing the t-Rex skull at the Natural History museum and the various space
vessels at the Air and Space museum. I am extremely grateful to my parents for
having taken us at least once a year.

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mbrock
I wrote this somewhat tedious text about my relation to museums as I was
embarking on a quest to visit and write about all of Amsterdam's museums (I
stopped after 5).

[http://blog.goula.sh/post/76719719068/the-
museumkaart](http://blog.goula.sh/post/76719719068/the-museumkaart)

