![“Fera Septa” 2019, Acrylic and caulking on wire mesh, Approx. 65 x 65 x 60 inches [installed at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52ddfc88e4b0a28390eb8a65/1582481301843-EN9W7C3B7ND3AYTD4VZG/Fera+Septa.jpg)
“Fera Septa” 2019, Acrylic and caulking on wire mesh, Approx. 65 x 65 x 60 inches [installed at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan]
The New York Times: Grown-Up Art at a Children’s Museum, but It’s Still Playtime
Visitors to “Inside Art” can make their own work and collaborate with other artists. The show is just one of several activities available during school break.
Published Feb. 12, 2020
On a recent visit to an exhibition, I broke what is usually a museum’s most immutable rule. I touched the art.
No shocked guards stopped me or shooed away the many smaller patrons who were doing the same. Granted, this was the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. But unlike many displays for the young, this one, “Inside Art,” features work by 11 adults whose résumés include the Jewish Museum, El Museo del Barrio and the Whitney.
The show lets visitors encounter art “not as a child sort of pretending to be an adult,” said Leslie Bushara, the museum’s deputy director of education and exhibitions, but “running around like a child.”
Run around they do. Joiri Minaya’s “Spandex Installation #6 (Labyrinth)” invites the curious into a vibrantly printed fabric maze. “Up & Around,” a cluster of large cylinders suspended vertically by the duo Yeju & Chat, beckons museumgoers to stand inside each tube and experience bursts of color and pattern. Adrienne Elise Tarver’s “Fera Septa” is a beguiling mesh canopy resembling tropical leaves.
The new exhibition expands on a museum tradition begun in 2002, when “Art Inside Out” featured the work of the artists Elizabeth Murray, Fred Wilson and William Wegman. Children played with models of that art but not the art itself. In 2018, “Art, Artists & You” allowed them to work with resident artists, but not to handle the pieces in the show.“We knew this next exhibit needed to be something kids could physically engage with and aesthetically engage with,” said David Rios, the museum’s director of public programs and curator of “Inside Art.”
The new exhibition expands on a museum tradition begun in 2002, when “Art Inside Out” featured the work of the artists Elizabeth Murray, Fred Wilson and William Wegman. Children played with models of that art but not the art itself. In 2018, “Art, Artists & You” allowed them to work with resident artists, but not to handle the pieces in the show.
“We knew this next exhibit needed to be something kids could physically engage with and aesthetically engage with,” said David Rios, the museum’s director of public programs and curator of “Inside Art.”
