Visiting an Art Museum with Children: Scavenger Hunt

Who doesn't like a scavenger hunt?  A list of things to find, a sense of surprise and excitement, learning something perhaps you didn't know before.  Scavenger hunts are a great way to explore a museum without getting bogged down in seeing everything.  Many museums offer scavenger hunts in their children's materials or as special programs, just check their online listings (for example, The Cloisters is hosting a self-guided art hunt May 23-24, 2009).  Similarly, many companies offer scavenger hunts, such as Watson Adventures, while Wikipedia Loves Art has teamed up with the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their own thematic photograph scavenger hunt.

But you can also design your own, even if you have never visited that particular museum before.  And, by designing it yourself, you can tailor it to your own child's interests.  Start with the museum's website and map.  Clues need not only be about the art on the walls and pedestals, but can incorporate architectural features and amenities (such as shops or cafes), especially because these elements are unlikely to change, unlike works on view.  Pick a theme--from introduction to animals, portraits to history--and choose your questions based on it.  Decide on the goal of your hunt. Is it a fact-finding scavenger hunt, i.e. "find an artist who liked to paint water-lilies," or an exploratory, open-ended hunt with almost no wrong answers, i.e. "find a painting with food in it"?   Your child's interests and your knowledge of the museum will help determine your choice.  Is it a cooperative effort, with the whole family working together on one hunt, or a competitive effort with different individuals (except the hunt designer, of course) racing against one another (oh, but please don't run!!)?  Knowing your family will help you decide.  A few other things to consider:  does the hunt have to be done in the order it's written?  will you give hints (like playing "hotter-colder")?  is there a time-limit?  a prize?  For some good ideas and examples, see TimeOut New York's animal scavenger hunt at the Met, complete with parent's cheat sheet, a variety of age-appropriate hunts specific to the National Gallery of Art.

Happy hunting!

Visiting an Art Museum with Children: I Spy

Going to an art museum with children? Try playing "I Spy." This game allows kids to adapt a familiar game to an often unfamiliar setting. It also gives them a way to look at art by helping them locate ordinary objects. Finally, it encourages close looking at a single work of art. You can play this game with almost any genre, style, or period of art. Seventeenth-century still lifes feature wonderful foods and objects. American nineteenth-century landscapes allow discussion of weather, buildings, and land features. Portraits from any period contain interesting clothing, settings, and objects.

Start the game by reminding kids that this is a game for eyes only, not pointing fingers. Then pick a painting (though this also works with most sculptures) and have someone start the "I Spy" game by locating an object and waiting for others to spot it. The "spotter" can then spy the next object. You can also start with a question such as "What do you see?" and then follow that up with "What else do you see?" For many children (even young ones), identifying the objects can be a jumping off point for deeper discussion of what is happening in the painting. Later, with some children, you can ask questions about time and place, as in "Do you think this peron lives here now?" or "Do you think this is a picture of our hometown?" Follow it up with "what makes you say that?" which encourages supporting evidence for an answer.

If you are familiar with the museum or have a quick eye, you can enter an entire gallery asking children to find a particular kind of work of art, stating something like, "I spy a moutain," and letting the kids search the whole room. This works best in small galleries with few other visitors. An offshoot of this would be a treasure hunt, a very standard museum field trip activity.

But that will have to be another post.