Art To Tell Stories and More

I am heading off to NYC in a few days.  My trips to New York has been exciting and formative over the years. In my family, it was the tradition that our father took us on a short trip to NYC when we were 10 years old.  I am especially anticipating this visit because I have two destinations that tie directly into my current app development; the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

• China, Wine Vessel (Zun) in the Form of a Goose, 206 B.C.E.-220 C.E. Bronze, 11 1/2 x 6 3/16 x 17 1/2 in. (29.2 x 15.7 x 44.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum photograph

Recently I discovered that the Brooklyn Museum has made available for download and use many images from their collection. These images are available with a Creative Commons-BY license. This means I am free to adapt their images and share them with this license as long as I credit the museum. What a boon to media developers.  Congratulations to the Brooklyn Museum and other institutions who are doing the same.  The Portland  Art Museum is another resource I am tapping for this project. Both the Brooklyn Museum and the Portland Art Museum have extensive collections of ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptian art.

China, Eastern Han period (25–220 CE),earthenware
The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection of Early Chinese Art, Portland Art Museum

Since my trip to China in 2011, I have intensified my study of Chinese art history.  The Asian Art Museum (in San Francisco) has a very extensive offering of art history lectures on iTunesU.  At one point I realized I had watched over 45 hours of lectures about Chinese art history focusing on the Shang, Zhou, Qin and Han dynasties. I am fascinated by the early bronze sculpture and especially intrigued at how accessible they are for children. There are so many animal objects that reflect not only a realism and love of the creatures, but are humorous and delightfully entertaining. Case in point is the goose at the top of this article and the hedgehog below. It does add to the mystic for me that these objects were made over two thousand years ago.

Egypt, Hedgehog, ca. 1938-1700 B.C.E. Faience, 1 5/8 x 1 5/8 x 2 13/16 in. (4.2 x 4.1 x 7.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 65.2.1. Creative Commons-BY

My project, which is designed for very young children, involves finding a selection of these animals and bringing them together in a story with animated components that bring the animals to life. I am working with sculpture from ancient China and ancient Egypt. Why these objects for this age group?  I am a great believer in introducing children to artwork from around the world to better understand of our shared history, our shared human experience.  I am also a great believer in starting this process as early as possible.

ABC Egyptian Art from The Brooklyn Museum of Art

The first book I bought for my daughter when she was a baby, ironically, was the ABC Egyptian Art from The Brooklyn Musueum. I was surprised to discover that it is still in print, originally published in April of 1988, a few months after she was born. 

I am making connections with the Education Departments at these museum to brainstorm about how to add to their efforts to make their collection available to children everywhere, regardless of whether they can come to the museum in person or not. As an educator and artist living in a small community in Central VA (after years in the DC area) I seek out those arts institutions that are invested in making their collections and exhibitions available online.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, another greatly anticipated destination this trip, has innumerable online resources for accessing their collection. Their new series 82nd & Fifth is a collection of short videos of artwork selected by curators to document work that has been significant to them. There are currently 16 in the series building to a total of 100. While at the Met I will be spending a lot of time in their Chinese galleries. 

I will also visit the MoMA Art Lab.  Not directly related to my current project, but I am looking forward to meeting Cari Frisch at the Sandbox Summit in April and would love to drop in and say hey while I am there.  I am a huge fan of MoMA's online presence. Their exhibition On Line with this virtual component has been a part of my college level drawing curriculum for a few years.


I am finding a robust and diverse collection of objects to incorporate into stories that introduce young children to artistic expression that has been a part of the human experience for thousands of years. This makes me very happy.  I am looking forward to sharing these stories soon.