Open Forum

I am looking to provide families, that participate in one of our outreach programs, opportunities to interact with the gallery spaces when they visit on their own.  We currently have a cart with boxes, located near our historical gardens, that visitors may borrow to use and make their own watercolor paintings in the gardens.  This is wildly successful but very messy and clean up/maintenance is very staff intensive. 

So I am looking for something that is much more easy to maintain.  I am thinking, a bag with a theme that families can explore by reading a book in the galleries, looking for art, creating art (a medium that is safe for our galleries- like colored pencils), and something to do at home. 

Please share successes and failures you have had at your institutions with similar activities.

Thanks!

-Dulcie

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Dulcimer Hause
Museum Educator
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
Jacksonville FL
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The Horniman in London does a great job with this. They created smocks for children to wear with with pockets that each have an animal theme (snail, etc) associated with their museum and the information. 

The pockets on these smocks contain all the materials for a self-guided (but parent facilitated) tour. For instance, a laminated card with information to look for in the museum, a magnifying glass, interesting facts, and even a parent guide. Each of these pieces is attached to the pocket via a cord so it is not lost.

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Zerah Jakub
Manager of Educational Resoirces & Outreach
George Washington's Mount Vernon 
Mount Vernon VA
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I love your watercolor picture idea.  How about using the colored watercolor pencils?  They draw their picture and then they can go over the picture with water to create a water color effect. They can add the water to their picture at home.

Over the past 5 years we have been adding hands on activities throughout our museum that tie into our exhibits.  They are very popular.  We get more repeat visitors and younger visitors.

Our exhibits staff has created wooden puzzles based on some of the of the artwork.  Children and adults have enjoyed putting them together.

-Windy

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Windy Cole
Volunteer Resource Manager
Culture & Heritage Museums
Rock Hill SC
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The Denver Art Museum has an awesome program with activity bags for their family visitors. Might be worth checking out!

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Amber Parham
Museum Educator/Performer
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Denver CO
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Thank you all for the info!  I am getting in contact with DAM and the Horniman to find out more details about what they are doing.  Would love to hear about more museums and what they are doing!

Windy- Yes, our watercolor project is awesome and WILDLY successful.  It is something that is ongoing and always available to our general visitors.  I am looking for something in addition to this and that is much more low maintenance.

Thanks!

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Dulcimer Hause
Museum Educator
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
Jacksonville FL
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Another "Museum Friendly" medium is felt.  Felt "sticks" to felt so you can give children a larger piece of felt as a "canvas" plus various shapes they can use to create their art/imaginary play scenarios. Magnets are also great (you can use them with a cookie sheet etc.) although they aren't quite as portable since the base can't be folded up.

If you haven't dipped into the world of Pinterest yet, there are a number of great ideas from early childhood educators and families for "busy boxes" "quiet activities" etc that may provide some more inspiration.

The National Building Museum also has an excellent "toolkit" program that is worth exploring. Hope that helps!

Sarah

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Sarah Erdman
Consultant
Washington DC
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Here at the Barnes Foundation, Lynn Berkowitz has developed several wonderful kits for families to use when they visit. The original family pack, called "Riddle of the Room" is contained in a brightly coloured cardboard pocket with a handle for easy carrying. The pocket holds several cards which have questions about items and images to look for in each room of our galleries. Additional cards include activities and art projects that a child can do at home. After walking through the galleries and assembling the clues, the child can pick up a prize at our Visitor Services Desk or in our library (they also get to keep their kit too). Lynn has modified this family pack on a couple of occasions to match the themes of our special exhibits (for example, the theme was changed to "Solving Still Life" when we featured an exhibit of Cezanne still lifes last summer).

Additionally, she created a fabulous app that can be downloaded for free at the iTunes store. This app allows children to jump into paintings and re-arrange ensembles as they travel through the galleries. The app and the family packs are two really engaging ways for children in a wide range of ages to interact with our rather intimidating galleries.

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Denise Bolton
Barnes Shop Floor Supervisor
Barnes Foundation
Philadelphia PA
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What about adding games about art in your galleries to the kits? At the Getty Museum, we've been experimenting with pairing games with related works of art (albeit in a semi-facilitated program setting, not self-use) and visitors have loved it.

One of the things I love about games is their potential to have an age-free quality, and their ability to create opportunities for hands-on experimentation and exploration of art-related concepts. You can find/make a lot of games that can be adapted to be fun for adults and children of all ages. You can custom-make games, which we have done, but if you need something quick/easy, you can also use off-the-shelf items, which we have also done. I think quite a while ago, the North Carolina Museum of Art created its own gallery game (board game style) that was self use. I don't know what the current status is of that game, or whether they found it to be effective at achieving their objectives, but if you wanted to go the custom-route, it might be worth finding out about. We also created a quest-like riddle game where visitors hunt for answers to riddles in four works of art in our galleries. They then put together the answers to uncover a code that opens a safe hidden on our site that has their "reward". Families absolutely love this game and it gets them to look closely at the featured works of art (my core objective). You can do this sort of quest-like game with almost any type of art, you just have to get creative about writing your riddles.

For off-the-shelf type games, there are several art card games that you can purchase or make your own (look at Birdcage Press' website). Granted, card games aren't all that innovative or unusual for visitors to come across, so not my personal top choice. We've used a game called "Suspend" and "Suspend Jr." by Melissa and Doug to teach about modern sculpture, and it's really fun. (It connects directly with a Mark di Suvero work that we have in our outdoor sculpture collection.) Visitors absolutely love this game. I am sure you could find other games to connect with specific collections/exhibitions that you have in mind.

There are also cool game-like activities (though technically not games) that you can purchase off the shelf, such as ShapeScapes, which is like a Calder-inspired Lego building activity that would be fun to do near that genre of sculpture. The advantage to a material like this is that it's very low maintenance -- you hardly need to do anything -- because any number of pieces will do. For the Cummer's current exhibition of Chaim Gross sculptures, for example, I could envision putting together a self-use sculpture activity kit with things like Suspend Jr. and ShapeScapes and some sculpture-making kits that you put together with items like colored sheet foam and colored telephone wire that can be used to make take-home sculptures without using glue or other messy materials. 

I find the highest maintenance types of games are those that require very specific pieces, where if lost, the whole thing becomes unusable until restocked. I'd stay away from that style of game if you are trying to go low-maintenance.

Hope you find something here useful! Good luck!

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Rebecca Edwards
Education Specialist
J. Paul Getty Museum
Los Angeles CA
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Thanks, Sarah, Rebecca, and Denise!  Great ideas.  Felt is a great idea.  And the riddles are spot on for what I'm thinking.  

Thank you all so much!

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Dulcimer Hause
Museum Educator
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
Jacksonville FL
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Dear Dulcimer,

I would suggest you to consider a treasure hunt: give the instructiosn at the entrance, ask children to find some items around the museum (a detail in a painting, a specifit artist, a strange flower, etc) and give a little reward to those who find all the required items (it could also be a simple museum pin).

This way, you make people visit the whole museum, you give children a purpuse and you push them to actually see the pieces on show... and hopefully remember them!

Best,

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Silvia Pugi
ceo Artelling
Milano - Italy
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The Dallas Museum of Art provides themed (color or sensory) tote bags filled with hands-on learning. Here’s a link with a bit more info: Art To Go Family Tote Bags | Dallas Museum of Art

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Katie Powell
Membership Manager
Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Dallas TX
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With every show that comes to the Dixon, we make a scavenger hunt to go along with it. We have an exhibit of large scale ceramic work right now by Jun Kaneko, and our scavenger hunt consists of matching colors. It gets tricky if you add multiple shades of red/green/blue etc. But could also be very easy if you only do one of easy type of color. It works well with this show. We've also done scavenger hunts more like "find a man with a lion on his elbow" so that kids are looking carefully at each painting. 

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Florence Brem
Children's Program Coordinator
Dixon Gallery and Gardens
Memphis TN
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