"My Kid Could Paint That"

In 2005, a young art star made headlines around the world for her abstract canvases, which had their first showing at a gallery in Binghampton, NY and were soon mentioned in The New York Times.

A very young art star. Marla Olmstead was then four years old.

A 2007 documentary entitled My Kid Could Paint That by director Amir Bar-Lev follows Marla's early success and the fallout from a devastating investigation by 60 Minutes into whether she really painted the works all by herself. Besides being an exploration of the definitions and meanings of modern art, with several good segments with the Times's art critic Michael Kimmelman, the documentary problematizes child celebrity, parental ambition, and journalistic motivation, including the director's. In the end, the question that remains is not really whether Marla completed the works alone (and the documentary suggests that she didn't), or even if modern art is meaningless because a child could do it, but whether adults should ever draw children into an otherwise grown-up world.