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Fewer people are going to the National Gallery and the people who run it aren’t sure why.
[Director Marc] Mayer says the gallery is asking itself many questions about attendance, including, “is it us, or is it art? Is art the handicap, or is it that the National Gallery’s intimidating? Is it not fun to come here? We need to find that out.”
It’s probably a lot of things. Here’s what it is for me.
I’ve been with children twice. Once with a two-year-old, and once a little later with him and his four-year-old brother.
The time with the two-year-old had a magical moment, the kind of experience you imagine you’ll have a lot more frequently before you become a parent. We paused in the Water Court, where the sound of gently rippling water echoes off the concrete walls. Our little break lasted 40 minutes, my younger son sitting peacefully on my lap, just listening.
He never does that. He’s a well-behaved little boy but he’s not the type to sit still.
Other kids came and went, ran around, chatted with their parents, hopped along the stone benches. My boy sat with me and emitted the occasional happy sigh. When we absolutely had to leave, he didn’t want to.
(He was so taken by Lawren Harris’s North Shore, Lake Superior that we bought a poster that’s on his bedroom wall. He liked Chromatic Accelerator, too.)
It was so wonderful it made up for all the other unpleasantness about the gallery and brought me back with the two children next time.
Let me stipulate a couple of things: An art gallery is not a playground, it’s fundamentally an adult place. Kids shouldn’t be tearing around it, even if somebody’s keeping an eye on them. It’s not a place for raucous noise or for pawing the displays.
Children won’t be enthralled by a painter’s mastery of chiaroscuro or the way a sculpture demonstrates the sculptor’s subtle grasp of physiology. Parents who want to take kids there have to be prepared for some hard duty, and to just leave when the children get bored.
Here are the ways the gallery made it hard for us.
First of all, we were stalked from room to room by guards. You can’t pause in front of a canvas and enjoy it while you’re being stared at by a guard who wants you to leave. There were more of them than there were visitors, so maybe they just wanted something to do, but the overall sensation was that we were under surveillance throughout our visit.
You aren’t allowed to carry a child on your shoulders, where he’ll be comfortable and under control and can see better. If you ask what the reason is, they won’t tell you. It’s just against the rules. I never did find out why. I learn by perusing the gallery website that it’s for “safety,” though I don’t get why carrying him uncomfortably on my hip was OK but comfortably on my shoulders wasn’t. Also, it turns out they’ll lend you a stroller if you want, which nobody mentioned at the time.
The drawings and photographs collection, likely the most accessible of the art in the museum, was closed, something we didn’t learn till we got to the locked door.
We saw Court, an installation piece that’s essentially a basketball court made from repurposed industrial sewing tables. The nets have metal gantries behind them you can climb onto to look down on the court. If your child likes stepping heavily on the metal stairs in the big echoey room, a guard will speak to you even if you and he are the only people in the room. Also, you can climb on the stairs and platform, but do not touch one of the tables with your hand.
Would you like to linger and enjoy Forty-Part Motet in the Rideau Chapel? There is one bench. Do not perch on the lip of the sanctuary — outside the velvet rope that seems to indicate where you aren’t supposed to go but is actually itself behind an invisible line that is the real boundary. Sit on the floor.
My feeling, upon leaving, was not just that the gallery was not designed for kids. Which it isn’t, and which is fine. It is, as I say, an adult place.
No, my feeling was that it had been booby-trapped against us, loaded up with things that seemed inviting but were off-limits, things that wouldn’t be harmed by touching but which you aren’t allowed to touch. I never knew how we were going to offend next. It’s the opposite of my experience with Ottawa’s other museums, which, if anything, might lean a little too far in the direction of kid-friendliness.
Parents with small children are probably not the gallery’s core demographic, but if a downtown yuppie like me has a frustrating, occasionally humiliating, time visiting with one child on a snowy Sunday afternoon, that doesn’t seem like a good sign for the gallery’s long-term prospects.
A FAQ sheet aimed explicitly at parents would help, along with staff who see it as their job to help solve problems, not just defend the collection. Simple attention to creature comforts — why is there nowhere to sit? — would go a long way, too.
The best moment of either visit, the pause in the water court, had very little to do with art, but it’s what makes me want to return. The art is also not what’s keeping me away.
We’ll probably go back at some point. It’s the National Gallery, right? The kids will grow into it. But I’m not in a hurry.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
[Director Marc] Mayer says the gallery is asking itself many questions about attendance, including, “is it us, or is it art? Is art the handicap, or is it that the National Gallery’s intimidating? Is it not fun to come here? We need to find that out.”
It’s probably a lot of things. Here’s what it is for me.
I’ve been with children twice. Once with a two-year-old, and once a little later with him and his four-year-old brother.
The time with the two-year-old had a magical moment, the kind of experience you imagine you’ll have a lot more frequently before you become a parent. We paused in the Water Court, where the sound of gently rippling water echoes off the concrete walls. Our little break lasted 40 minutes, my younger son sitting peacefully on my lap, just listening.
He never does that. He’s a well-behaved little boy but he’s not the type to sit still.
Other kids came and went, ran around, chatted with their parents, hopped along the stone benches. My boy sat with me and emitted the occasional happy sigh. When we absolutely had to leave, he didn’t want to.
(He was so taken by Lawren Harris’s North Shore, Lake Superior that we bought a poster that’s on his bedroom wall. He liked Chromatic Accelerator, too.)
It was so wonderful it made up for all the other unpleasantness about the gallery and brought me back with the two children next time.
Let me stipulate a couple of things: An art gallery is not a playground, it’s fundamentally an adult place. Kids shouldn’t be tearing around it, even if somebody’s keeping an eye on them. It’s not a place for raucous noise or for pawing the displays.
Children won’t be enthralled by a painter’s mastery of chiaroscuro or the way a sculpture demonstrates the sculptor’s subtle grasp of physiology. Parents who want to take kids there have to be prepared for some hard duty, and to just leave when the children get bored.
Here are the ways the gallery made it hard for us.
First of all, we were stalked from room to room by guards. You can’t pause in front of a canvas and enjoy it while you’re being stared at by a guard who wants you to leave. There were more of them than there were visitors, so maybe they just wanted something to do, but the overall sensation was that we were under surveillance throughout our visit.
You aren’t allowed to carry a child on your shoulders, where he’ll be comfortable and under control and can see better. If you ask what the reason is, they won’t tell you. It’s just against the rules. I never did find out why. I learn by perusing the gallery website that it’s for “safety,” though I don’t get why carrying him uncomfortably on my hip was OK but comfortably on my shoulders wasn’t. Also, it turns out they’ll lend you a stroller if you want, which nobody mentioned at the time.
The drawings and photographs collection, likely the most accessible of the art in the museum, was closed, something we didn’t learn till we got to the locked door.
We saw Court, an installation piece that’s essentially a basketball court made from repurposed industrial sewing tables. The nets have metal gantries behind them you can climb onto to look down on the court. If your child likes stepping heavily on the metal stairs in the big echoey room, a guard will speak to you even if you and he are the only people in the room. Also, you can climb on the stairs and platform, but do not touch one of the tables with your hand.
Would you like to linger and enjoy Forty-Part Motet in the Rideau Chapel? There is one bench. Do not perch on the lip of the sanctuary — outside the velvet rope that seems to indicate where you aren’t supposed to go but is actually itself behind an invisible line that is the real boundary. Sit on the floor.
My feeling, upon leaving, was not just that the gallery was not designed for kids. Which it isn’t, and which is fine. It is, as I say, an adult place.
No, my feeling was that it had been booby-trapped against us, loaded up with things that seemed inviting but were off-limits, things that wouldn’t be harmed by touching but which you aren’t allowed to touch. I never knew how we were going to offend next. It’s the opposite of my experience with Ottawa’s other museums, which, if anything, might lean a little too far in the direction of kid-friendliness.
Parents with small children are probably not the gallery’s core demographic, but if a downtown yuppie like me has a frustrating, occasionally humiliating, time visiting with one child on a snowy Sunday afternoon, that doesn’t seem like a good sign for the gallery’s long-term prospects.
A FAQ sheet aimed explicitly at parents would help, along with staff who see it as their job to help solve problems, not just defend the collection. Simple attention to creature comforts — why is there nowhere to sit? — would go a long way, too.
The best moment of either visit, the pause in the water court, had very little to do with art, but it’s what makes me want to return. The art is also not what’s keeping me away.
We’ll probably go back at some point. It’s the National Gallery, right? The kids will grow into it. But I’m not in a hurry.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
