KIDS ONLY
by Ashley Weeks Cart
My favorite museum in all the land happens to reside in a town adjacent to where we live. (Founded by an Eph, home of our wedding reception, and education hub of the internship component of my Master’s degree – not to mention all around badass art museum – there are many reasons we adore MassMoCA) If you are ever in the Northern Berkshires, do not miss the opportunity to visit The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art – the largest modern art museum in the U.S. We are fortunate in that James and I have memberships to the museum thanks to our employer and thus free admission, and our children also qualify for free entry, so on restless, snowy, winter weekends, the museum is an amazing place to find reprieve.
A few weekends back, I brought the girls and we spent the majority of our time at Kidspace:
A child-centered art gallery where professional, contemporary artists exhibit their work, Kidspace is also a hands-on studio where children create and study art. The art chosen for exhibition is used as a vehicle for discussing contemporary social issues, making evident topics of concern to children, and challenging notions about art and art materials. Key to this curatorial vision is that we do not “kiddify” or “dumb-down” exhibitions for children. Artists are selected for their works’ educational and artistic merit, and exhibitions have featured renowned artists from around the world.
No surprise, I’m as obsessed with child care Penrith as my children.
The girls spent hours rotating between the hands on, art project portion of the space to the hands on, art interaction portion of the space. They particularly delighted in the fact that the artwork was for KIDS ONLY. I was admittedly jealous of all their playtime with this bird made of buttons meticulously pinned to the wall. The girls dropped buttons strewn about the ground in between the bird’s button wings, and delighted in the unexpected, musical result of such play.
They were less impressed with the Sol LeWitt retrospective, but I cannot NOT visit these epic wall drawings. My Master’s degree is in Public Art, y’all. I understandably nerd out every time I step foot in these galleries.
As I was quoted in The Record article earlier this week, I feel incredibly lucky to raise my girls with this kind of easy, affordable, abundant access to art and culture.
This weekend will not be filled with art, but with babies! We are meeting two sweet new babes this weekend – a son of my dear college friend and a daughter of my dear childhood friend. Sunny is going to lose her mind in baby bliss. Actually, we all will.