Visiting Art Galleries and Museums with Little Artists 👩🎨👨🎨
Sharing some tips & tricks to bringing little artist(s) to visit with big artist(s)!
While visiting art galleries and museums with little artists can be daunting, here are our tips for having a great time and getting inspired!
Before going into a gallery or museum, it’s helpful to remind your artists about some behaviors we will do with our bodies. We will use walking feet indoors, look with our eyes, keep our hands to ourselves and use indoor voices.
When we go inside a gallery, we like to first walk around noticing what we see, making sure to leave space between our bodies and the artwork, then go find a spot to sit so we can do a short art activity and talk more about what we notice.
Materials:
Sketchbook
Pencil with eraser
Pipe cleaners
Museum-approved bag
Let’s get started!
Steps
Some questions to start a conversation:
What do you notice?
What colors and shapes do you see?
What materials do you think the artist used?
What does the artwork remind you of?
How do you think the artist felt while making the artwork? Do you feel similarly when you look at it?
While you’re sitting and looking at the artwork, it’s a great time to start by doing some sketching with pencil in your sketchbook (note: check with gallery museum attendants first, but usually pencil is okay). After sketching, you can use a pipe cleaner to recreate the shapes you see. Try following the line of your sketch or a line you see in the artwork.
Pipe cleaners can also be a great fidget tool for artists who like to keep their hands busy, just make sure to not leave any behind for others to clean up.
We like to keep our visits to galleries and museums short to keep our little artists engaged, and give them time to do some movement outside before and after.
Tip: If the museum has a kids gallery or studio check it out! We always have so much fun trying out the art activities and giving our artists time to enjoy a space designed for them!
