Visiting the Objectivity Exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Objectivity Exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

For my birthday, I asked if we could go to the Objectivity exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia.  I wrote a review of the exhibit that I put in our family journal:

Fostering Love for Art: A Family Pursuit

Stimulating your child’s creativity will provide them with a lifelong source of enjoyment and relaxation.

While many parents provide their children with all the materials to let them make projects, they rarely take them to art exhibits or museums to see how others have put their talents and various media to use.

After taking my young daughter to museums and exhibits, I have developed a few activities that can make viewing art a fun and challenging experience.

Visiting the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia’s current show Objectivity: International Objects of Subjectivity offers families a great opportunity to create scavenger hunts for museum visits, for example.

Before visiting an exhibit, try to set the stage for your outing.  Find a book on contemporary art from the library and look at it with your children.

You may want to purchase art books for children as well based on what you see at the library or bookstore.  I purchased Art Forms by Duane Preble at a used book sale for the purpose of discussing contemporary art.  When I planned visits to contemporary art exhibits with my daughter, I would look over this book with her.

When I first started taking my daughter to museums, I had a mental checklist of things to look for to keep her interested in the artwork.  I would ask her questions like:

-Do you see any angels?

-Do you see any mothers?

-Do you see any babies?

For specific exhibits, I try to find out what kinds of items will be on display, so I can make a scavenger hunt list. 

Scavenger hunt items for the Objectivity exhibit included:

-a skeleton

-books

-pillow

-baby cradle

-garbage cans

-spider

-feathers

-butterflies

-canoe

-spiral staircase

-tires

-Chinese characters

As your child locates these items, you can read the labels to find out what country the artist is from and help your child build their vocabulary in the process.  Scavenger hunts are also a way to teach your child to become observant.

The unconventional subject matter and a variety of media in this show would pique interest in many children.  A pail of fingers and a four-sided basketball hoop were among my daughter’s favorite works at the Objectivity exhibit.

My entire family liked Ik-Joong Kung’s pagoda-like structure called English Garden decorated with three-inch tiles and topped off with cassette players.

The idea for tiles came to Kung when he was commuting between the Pratt Institute and his jobs at a Korean grocery store and a flea market.

Kung had no time for studio work, but could easily fit the tiles in his pocket and work on them while he was commuting.  The tiles record his impressions of his life as a foreigner in New York.

Inspired by Kung’s work, the Center for Contemporary Art provides its visitors with the opportunity to purchase a tile for fifty cents to decorate and make part of a mosaic shown in the exhibit.

On the way home from an exhibit, talk about art projects that would be fun to do with your child.  Some easy art projects include:

-make a collage from photos cut from a catalog

-fill a shoebox with everyday objects to make a time capsule for future generations.  (Inspired by the Monica Exhibit from Brazil at the Children’s Museum in Madison, Wisconsin.)

-use pictures drawn on copy paper to “tile” a door

-create sculpture using boxes paper bags and other items such as cupcake papers, photographs, and string

Make sure to display your children’s artwork and make labels for it to hang up in their bedroom.

A good reference book for children’s art projects is Creative Art for the Developing Child:  A Teacher’s Handbook for Early Childhood Education by Clare Cherry

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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