Helping Your Child Appreciate Art and Museums

‘Twas a lovely day yesterday.  March 3rd normally is.  That’s because March 3rd is my birthday.

My handsome hubby took a half day off so he could spend the morning with me.  The night before, he presented me with many well researched options for our morning together, and I chose to go to Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art.

Oh, how I miss that museum.  When I attended BYU, I would stop in many times a week to see if my favorite paintings were still there.  As an Art History major, I even had classes in the lovely place.  I volunteered at the museum and later, when I worked for BYU’s anthropology museum (The Museum of Peoples and Cultures), I got to spend hours in the art museum’s basement playing with…I mean…carefully handling anthropological objects that were housed there.

Getting lost in a museum is one of my favorite things to do and I so want my daughter to appreciate art and museums.

Going to museums or art galleries with a toddler can be tricky.  But if you do it right, you can really have a good time with your child.  When Lydia was just a few months old, I wrote a post for Vanessa at I Never Grew Up about visiting museums with children SUCCESSFULLY!  You can read it here.  Since Lydia was still a wee baby when I wrote it, my tips were based on how I WOULD do a museum with a child.  Now that Lydia is a very active toddler, I find that my tips hold true. 

We had a great day yesterday, mainly because we involved Lydia.  We held her at the paintings’ levels and talked about things that would interest her- animals, babies, colors, shapes.  We helped her relate to beautiful landscapes by asking if she thought they were pretty and if she would like to go there.  She even let me tell her stories about the backgrounds of a few paintings.  When she got bored, we moved on, circling back later if we missed something we wanted to see.

The cutest thing was when Ryan took her into another room while I lingered at a painting.  When I joined them, she hopped, jumped and ran (whoops) to different sculptures and paintings, proudly telling me what they were about.  “That’s Mary.  That’s Baby Jesus.  That’s donkey.  That’s red and that one’s red too!  Look!  Kitty!”  It seems Ryan had already given her a lesson- and it stuck.

Of course, she got antsy.  Fortunately, it happened towards the end of our visit, so we were happy we had seen our favorite exhibits first.  That may be my best piece of advice- go directly to what YOU want to see!

I’m curious: do you take your children to museums?  Do you enjoy museums yourself?