Pre-Visit Activity: Our Trip to the Met

We are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow. While it's not our first trip to an art museum, having been to The Art Institute of Chicago, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Folk Art Museum, it really is the big leagues: the kids are old enough to understand some of what they are seeing and we are actually attending a program while we are there. It will be their first museum education program, about which I am extremely excited.

So, while we have only told them here at the proverbial last minute that we are going, I have been long considering how we would prepare them. Tonight we looked over the Family Map from the Met's website and they were immediately struck by the cartoons of the woman stepping out of the sarcophagus on the cover. What was that? What was she doing? How do you explain sarcophagi to three year olds who can't comprehend death or after-life or ancient Egypt? Bud kept saying he didn't want to die and didn't want me to die because he didn't want us to go in the box; Sis wanted to die so she could get in the box. While morbid sounding, they really didn't understand the true impact of what they were saying, but it was disturbing nonetheless. And there is a lot of art about death (luckily there were no nudes in the map but there will be in the museum. I have that lesson ready too).

We got past that and started talking about rules at the art museum:

• We will talk in quiet, inside voices.
• We will walk and stick together.
• We will look with our eyes and not touch anything.

Why? Why can't they touch? Can they touch their maps? Of course, they can touch their maps or the postcards I promised to buy them at the shop. But they can't touch art. Why? Because our hands have greasy oils that eat art. Yes, even if they wash them. Oooooh. Works everytime, even if it is a bit dramatic. Good thing I've had lots of practice going over museum rules with kids.

But, Bud wondered, could we dance in the museum like that girl? That girl being Ella from Ella's Trip to the Museumby Elaine Clayton. Ella goes on a field trip to an art museum and communes, even enters, the works on display (and dancing with a statue of the goddess Flora), all while her teacher gives a boring tour (don't get me started on the representation of educators/docents in art museums in popular culture). Sis found the book in question and we read it. The guard gets angry, Bud notes. Yes, I reminded him that guards were there to protect the art and us the visitors; there would be no dancing in the Met tomorrow.

Even if I'm dancing in my head all the way there . . . .