Take Young Kids to the Art Museum...Virtually

As a parent or educator, do you want to introduce the children in your life to fascinating objects that tell stories? Even better, have them be great objects of art from a wide variety of times and places? What about getting the kids to tell you the stories they see in the objects/images? Art museums can be amazing resources for just these kinds of activities.There are also some good apps to help out if you don't have time to peruse the museum websites.

Wine Vessel (Zun) in the Form of a Goose, 206 B.C.E.-220 C.E. Bronze, Brooklyn Museum,  Creative Commons-BY

Is it just me? I love this goose. It brings out the 5 year old in me instantly. Would you like to have this goose as a pet? I have found animals a great link to communicating with children, they have so much appeal. Of course, animals have been subjects of art from the earliest days...since cave paintings. The Brooklyn Museum is a fabulous resource.

Kids also love to see other children. I grew up with a reproduction of Renoir's Girl With A Watering Can in my house. She is so endearing, what is she about the run off and do? What story would she tell about her day? This painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, another great on line resource.

Auguste Renoir A Girl with a Watering Can, 1876, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art

Anyone want to try this mode of transportation? What would your kids say? I am especially interested in non-western art. So much to investigate and learn from the images. This bowl is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

Bowl Depicting Bahram Gur and Azada, late 12th - early 13th century Ceramic Brooklyn Museum        Creative Commons-BY

How can you connect children with images of art objects....without leaving your home or school? These images and many, many more are available for viewing or download at the art museums who have made various of their resources accessible because they are either in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Of course you don't need to go to only those resources that have open access images.  My absolute favorites are the Brooklyn Museum, LA County Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Getty Museum and the Portland Art Museum. 
 
However, not everyone has time to peruse the museum websites looking for images to engage kids with great art, right? What are some of the other ways to do this for your kids/students? There are some great apps out there that offer alternatives.

MOMA Art Lab

MOMA Art Lab allows users to build art with geometric shapes and a number of activities that are based on specific works of art from their collection.

MOMA's Art Lab app

ArtLab activities tied to specific artist's work

Large images, like this one of an Alexander Calder sculpture accompany the various activities.

Let's build a mobile.

PlayART Van Gogh 

 PlayART Van Gogh takes objects from a number of Van Gogh paintings and lets the user rearrange to make their own creations.They can then be saved and shared.

PlayART Van Gogh home

Images from the bottom are dragged up to make an original creation from Van Gogh's work

Duck Takes A Ride: An Art Story

My company, Kristin Harris Design, recently released this interactive, animated narrative that is illustrated with ancient sculpture of animals from China and Egypt that are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Portland Art Museum and LACMA. This is a app designed to introduce young children to a variety of art objects woven together in story format. I am thrilled to bring this sculpture to the attention of families who may not be familiar with it.

 

ABC.DC: An Art Alphabet

Our next app, soon to be released, is an interactive, animated  ABC book with images from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  This is an art museum I grew up visiting and it's been so much fun exploring the 20,000 images they have put into the public domain and finding the best kid friendly images to put together in this animated, interactive ABC app.

Soon to be released iPad app

Each image is interactive and animated, here the horse rocks back and forth.

This etching of boys at the park has added animation of a dragon kite.

Art Swipe

Art Swipe is based on the concept of exquisite corpse from the Surrealists. Images are layered in thirds and swiped by the viewer to rearrange. The designer made very clever choices, including many faces, that work together to make both entertaining and humorous combinations.  Images can be viewed in their entirety with all of the pertinent information. The viewer can also add different artwork from the museum's collection or even from their own photo gallery. Combinations can be saved to the photo gallery or shared.

 

What are your favorite way to take your kids on a virtual museum visit?