Monday, July 16, 2007

The Very Inviting Children's Museum of NYC




Last week I finally checked out the CMA--New York's Children's Museum of the Arts and saw a bunch of really great work such as this swim scene above. It's a hands-on museum with work stations throughout the space-- each station is hosted by an
artist/staff person who is there to guide children and parents through different art-making processes. I was only there for a drive-by, but was tempted to sit down and make something because the atmosphere there was so open and inviting: each table had supplies laid out and chairs waiting around the perimeter, waiting to be occupied. At some of the tables sat a kid and a parent, or a few, but the atmosphere was calm and nice. Artwork populates the whole space as well, so it's a combo museum/studio. They also have classes for kids, which sound very appealing.

(Especially interesting to me as a teacher of animation is that they have lo-tech animation classes here.)

Here some photos of artwork that I especially admired, from the museum-- however, and unfortunately (with the exception of the apartment building below) they don't have the artists' names displayed...

Some nice, big portraits:


An apartment building with interior:


Jump roping:


Big Puppets: