| Edification value |  |
|---|---|
| Entertainment value |  |
| Should you go? | |
| Time spent | 140 minutes |
| Best thing I saw or learned | “Home Decoration Confusion,” by Ellen Harvey. A spare modernist dollhouse crammed with fancy wallpapers and chandeliers and such, from the ornamentation exhibit.
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The Children’s Museum of the Arts is my first review of a New York children’s museum. While I like to think I’m unusually immature for my age, I feel I should have an actual member of the intended audience help calibrate my impressions of these places. And so I enlisted the aid of an eight-year-old friend, whom I’ll call “Zed,” and his mom, who kindly visited with me. Thanks!
Located near Tribeca, the Children’s Museum of the Arts consists of a set of activity spaces arranged around a central open area. Kids have a wide choice of art projects, some of which require signing up in advance, others you can just walk in and do. On the day we visited the art options included:
- Making miniature clay figures
- Fun with sound and audio recording
- Bending wire into words or shapes and then making prints from it
- Painting wintry scenes
- Creating stop-motion animation
Helpers for all the activities we did were terrific — patient and engaged and full of fun and helpful ideas when needed.
In addition, there’s a specialized studio just for very young folks, where kids and their caregivers can collaborate.
The museum also has a neat mezzanine space with big windows onto the lobby and facing outside, filled with giant blue foam blocks of all shapes and sizes, where kids can build and destroy and generally rampage to their hearts’ content. I didn’t get the purpose of that at first, except to ensure the mixing of kid germs as much as possible.
However, Zed observed that he found it valuable. After concentrating on making a lengthy stop-motion video, he needed a place to blow off some steam before he was ready to engage in something else that required focus. So, good job on the museum to have thought of that. However, Zed also pointed out that he thought some kids would spend their whole visit just playing in there, not doing any of the art stuff.
And finally there are some private rooms where you can book art parties, as well as a “quiet room” with a few picture books, presumably for time outs.
Ornaments (Not the Christmas Kind)
This place is primarily an activity center; I’m almost a little skeptical of calling it a “museum.” But it does have some art installations. Indeed, the open connector space between the various activity studios housed an exhibit on called “Ornamentation and Other Refrigerator Magnets” by Ellen Harvey. I found it quite clever, although I think it’s a little more to a grown-up’s taste than a kid’s. For example, there’s a witty display of books riffing on modernist architect Adolph Loos’s lecture on “ornament and crime,” perched on the fanciest shelves imaginable.
I’d wager that most kids who visit this place don’t give the art a look at all. But engaging a kid in a conversation about stuff that’s fancy versus stripped down, and why some things are very decorated versus not so much, probably works well. It’s straightforward, and most kids will have some experience of that contrast, and possibly even an opinion about it.
Moreover, I respect the museum for (a) placing the wall texts down at kid-eye-level, (b) not oversimplifying the descriptions too much while (c) including a mini-glossary with each wall caption. Terms explained on various wall texts included “dictator,” “chic,” “hermitage,” “naturalistic,” and “stylized.” It was really well done, and again demonstrates the Children’s Museum curators considering their audience.
Another art installation featured a hallway full of flowers and plants and other organic forms all cut out of denim by British artist Ian Berry. I’m not sure I get it; why denim? But it was rather pretty just the same.
A Zed’s Eye View of the Children’s Museum of the Arts
Zed and I discussed his impression of the museum afterwards. He really liked it, and said he both learned stuff (like how tedious it is to make a stop-motion animation) and had fun (particularly in the room of soft bricks).
Zed made several things, including a pastel drawing of a “spider-mobile.” I would’ve thought that as a New Yorker Spider-Man would just take a Lyft or Via where he needs to go, or the subway. But Zed disagrees. He singled out the art studio as his favorite part, because he liked having a broad choice of materials to work with, and the freedom to create what he wanted to create.
His one caveat in terms of recommending the place was that he thought it best for “friends who don’t act like they have ADHD.” An interesting (and deliberate) choice of phrasing, but it conveys his point, and I agree. The CMA demands some focus and concentration from its young visitors, so those who are challenged by that may not find it fun. For most kids, though, it’s a good place to spend an afternoon experimenting with different artistic types and techniques.
I made about 5 seconds of this video (the bit starting at 0:35):
One final note: the Children’s Museum of the Arts lacks a cafe — be sure to bring some juice boxes or a snack or something. Alternately, if your kid, like Zed, is both sufficiently mature and obsessed with cars, there’s a very nearby Joe Coffee located inside the Cadillac showroom. So kids (or grown-ups, even) can ogle some extremely fancy cars while enjoying a post-museum snack.
For Reference:
| Address | 103 Charlton Street, Manhattan |
|---|---|
| Website | cmany.org |
| Cost | General Admission: $12 |
| Other Relevant Links |
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This incredible 1872 punch bowl and goblets, 36 pieces and 800 ounces worth (that’s 50 pounds! 22.68kg!) of sterling silver. A gift to Isaac Newton Marks, president of the New Orleans Fireman’s Charitable Association. It’s hard to see in the picture but the stem of each goblet is a fire fighter.
The Fire Museum is like the attic of the New York City Fire Department. It’s where all the old interesting stuff is, and exploring it is very much like sifting through a collection of fire-related artifacts that someone at some point considered worth keeping. 
Gary Simmons’s “Ghost Reels,” an installation in the stairway featuring the names of black stars of the silent film era, written in the style of a typewriter typeface, and partially blurred or erased, evoking a part of film history that many have forgotten.
The Drawing Center occupies a beautifully designed SoHo space, cast iron Corinthian columns outside, several gallery spaces within. It’s all very clean and spare and modern. Imminently Instagrammable, as they say.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum occupies the newest museum space in the city, having moved into spiffy new digs in SoHo in just the last two weeks. 
The new space for the museum is mostly terrific. You enter into a fairly narrow area where two greeters welcome you and point out what’s on. There are two gallery spaces, a smaller one to the left as you walk in , and a larger one to the right and back. There’s also a kitchen space as well. I am torn between thinking it’s charming that there’s a kitchen right sort of in the open, and thinking their architect really should’ve found a way to separate that from the public space.
The inaugural show is sort of a hodge-podge. I get that survey shows do that, and I would be disappointed if they’d segregated the gay art over here, the lesbian art over there, etc. Sorting by chronology or medium can oversimplify, too. But I would’ve appreciated some effort to put a lens on the collection. Love versus sex. Ideals of beauty. Something.
Should you go? It depends on how you feel about diversity and penises. And maybe, even if you are squeamish about either of those two things, you should consider going anyway. It might be good for you.
