Art for children often brings to mind cartoons or simple drawings, but the Chagall for Children exhibit at the Kohl Children’s Museum makes fine art fun and accessible, even for the five and under crowd.
Chagall for Children includes 14 multi-sensory explorations stations, each with a high quality reproduction of a Chagall piece.
“The Chagall for Children exhibit is specially designed to engage children in the exploration of both the history and talent of an exquisite artist,” said Sheridan Turner, President and CEO of Kohl Children’s Museum. “Children learn about Chagall’s masterpieces through interactive, multi-sensory exploration stations which encourage children to discover and work with specific art principals such as color, composition, light and texture.”
Cooper, Dexter, Campbell, and I explored the new Chagall for Children exhibit thoroughly. The exhibit is designed for children 2-12. Kids can read about the artwork and pick up a phone to listen to information about it, and each station has a unique activity related to the piece on display.
Campbell popped around from place to place, touching everything, picking up each phone, and spending some extra time on the stations where he could move things around.
Dexter liked building and doing anything that looked like a puzzle, and listened to the phone recordings at each of the stations.
Cooper didn’t interact with as many of the stations as the younger two, but enjoyed reading about every piece of artwork and spent more time at the stations he found interesting. And he loves seeing himself on tv, so he loved the At the Circus.
Some of the highlights according to my kids:
- American Windows, where kids can put the pieces together like a puzzle to create their own illuminated stained glass picture.
- At the Circus, a giant, bright, colorful painting with a camera focused on it; kids put on a cape to camouflage themselves against the painting and they can see themselves on a tv.
- The Poultry Yard, which has plush animal pieces kids can stick to the wall with Velcro to create farm animals or new combinations.
Experience Chagall for Children at the Kohl Children’s Museum before it leaves on September 6, 2015 to find out about the other interactive stations. You can read my Kohl Children’s Museum post for more information about other exhibits, or visit the Kohl Children’s Museum website.
