MuMo: a mobile museum for children

What a wonderful project this is! Conceived by Ingrid Brochard, entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist, MuMo is a traveling contemporary art museum especially for children aged 6 through 12. The project is the first major undertaking of her non-profit foundation, L'Art à l'Enfance.

Designed by New Jersey-based architect Adam Kalkin, the museum consists of a shipping container engineered to magically unfold and pop up like a Transformer toy, topped off with a giant inflatable pink bunny sculpture, courtesy of Paul McCarthy.

Kalkin's preliminary sketch for MuMo.

MuMo at a schoolyard in Cameroon

The museum was assembled in Liverpool in the spring of  2011, and from there was shipped across the channel to France. It began its journey to schoolyards throughout France last fall, and is now traveling to elementary schools in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire. It will return to France in the fall of this year, with a fully-booked tour schedule through the spring of 2013.

There are 15 internationally recognized artists featured in the museum, including Lawrence Weiner, Nari Ward, Paul McCarthy, Ghada Amer and Maurizio Cattelan. 

Children enter the museum in small groups of 14...no parents or teachers allowed! They are, however, accompanied by a child psychologist, who travels with the exhibition, and trains additional local adult mediators to assist.  In a recent interview with ArtInfo,  Brochard stated that at first she had wanted the children to explore the museum with no adults whatsoever. "But I was afraid that they would miss certain things or that they wouldn't take their time. The idea of guidance is important, as long as the child can speak freely and be listened to. It came down to shedding the academic habits and structure that teachers enforce. I didn't choose (psychologist) Donatella Caprioglio because she's a therapist but because she knows how to listen to children, because she respects their freedom," Brochard said. "I want to avoid at all costs having any authoritarian aspect to the visit."

After the visit, children make their own artwork, and Caprioglio and the mediators conduct a "café" to discuss the experience with the undoubtedly disappointed and frustrated parents and teachers, who are able only to experience the museum vicariously through their children's eyes and ears.  I love how this project turns the traditional pedagogical hierarchy upside down, and allows children space for creative exploration and critical thinking, on their own terms. In the artists selected for the exhibition, the curators avoid any dumbing-down or pandering to adult notions of what children are capable of appreciating, understanding or enjoying. Also on MuMo's website is some charming documentary footage of children's reactions the art they've just seen: one small boy in Cameroon is positively giddy about the experience, declaring Ghada Amer's work, his favourite in the exhibition, to be "Magnifique!...I've never seen anything like that before!".  What he has never seen before is a depiction of two people kissing, highlighting the cross-cultural exploration of similarity and difference that is at the core of this project.  I hope a full-length documentary about MuMo is in the works.

From MuMo's website, here is a short video clip about how the project started, with some interesting commentary from a few of the artists involved. Even if you don't speak French, you'll get the idea...and of course, the American architect and artists speak English.  Lawrence Weiner's comments about the importance of art the psychological development of children are spot-on.

The following excerpts from an interview with Ingrid Brochard (conducted by Françoise Claire Prodhon, via l'Art à l'Enfance) give a fuller sense of Brochard's philosophy and guiding principles:

Why do you wish to set up this project?
Ingrid Brochard : This project is part of a very personal thought process. In my eyes, art, or rather "the arts" in their widest sense: they have the power to open eyes on the world and the realm of emotions, they help us to get through life and its hardships. This is probably the observation that led me to think of a project that would help underprivileged children, or at least those who do not have access to art.

It's a charity with a humanitarian vocation. How do you plan to carry it out ?
This project is designed for the children of Europe, Africa, Asia, South America… It can be implemented with orphanages, hospitals and schools. It will take on the form of a travelling museum that will get to the children in places that are sometimes very remote. The idea is to provide them with a special moment during which they'll have to confront the creative process. But it will also create opportunities to share with the artists during workshops and performances.

What are the guiding principles of the project and how does it work?
The interventions can take on various forms. One of its aspects is the Mobile

Museum, but there are artists who design a project with a specific target that doesn't require them to go on location. For example, Florence Doléac, the designer, designed the blanket-transitional object project for us, which targets small children at an orphanage who don't really have any toys of their own. Another example: Lawrence Weiner is currently setting up the project of a book designed by artists for the children, which will be handed out to the children with the help of Libraries Without Borders.
I talked about L'Art à L'Enfance with many artists, and they all tend to appreciate that type of experience that's outside of the usual framework of contemporary creation, and in which there are no commercial stakes.

What do you mean by that?
I have first-hand experience with the world of contemporary art and its market, the strategic and economic stakes that pervade it. I'm not criticizing, but that's not what I'm looking for… Art is a tool of the mind, and by balancing our emotions, it transforms our outlook on the world, and that's what I wish for these children.

Why You Should Buy Art

I am back from New York, and this William Powhida print is one souvenir of a wonderful and art-filled trip. You can click on the image to enlarge.
(Actually, I bought the print online at Jen Beckman's "20x200" which is well worth a virtual visit, whether you can get to New York or not.)

I am an erratic blogger, and for that, I apologize. You'd think I'd have plenty to write about, having just spent the last week in New York, in the company of Our Montreal Correspondent. The problem is, I am slow thinker, and I need time to mull before I write...not a trait particularly well suited to the pace of the blogosphere.

While in NY, OMC and I visited the William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton event, "#class" at Winkleman Gallery, and participated in Saturday's Powhida-led "Art Walk" through a range of Chelsea galleries.

And since I am still mulling over that experience, for now I'll leave you with Eva Diaz's description and contextualization of the goings-on at #class, from Artforum:

"Mass education in the post–World War II period positioned pedagogy as a pivot between personal growth and wider sociopolitical transformation. Recent large-scale student protests against fee hikes and the profit-driven campus at the New School and throughout the University of California system can be seen as part of a larger reaction to how the prospect of education was subsequently instrumentalized as a consumer transaction. Similarly, a spate of artist collectives are reassessing how progressive pedagogical models can be employed as consciousness-raising tools. Joining related endeavors such as 16 Beaver, the Public School, e-flux’s Night School, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton have created #class, a series of public workshops in a classroom setting that, in its eclectic sprawl, seeks to investigate the effects of the economic downturn on the field of art: on its production, reception, distribution, and consumption; on its educational institutions and its institutions of display.
The setup is simple: A room contains several worktables and chairs lined with four chalkboards. Dozens of programs and open-ended brainstorming sessions have been scheduled for the one-month duration of the exhibition, and the artists will be present on a daily basis to use the gallery as a studio space. The “curriculum” ranges from the intentionally hokey (motivational speakers promising to unleash “wild creativity”) to the near heretical (dealers guaranteeing to answer questions about the art market with complete transparency)."

You can follow the events for yourself, by visiting the #class blog, and Ed Winkleman's blog, where you'll find a link to a gallery cam running a continuous live feed during gallery hours.

Brian Cox, actor, on language development!

Brian Cox teaches 30-month-old Theo a bit of Shakespeare. (first seen at boingboing)


Added on Feb 11:

I did not have time add comments to this clip when I originally posted it as one of my occasional offerings on creativity, language and memory development.

Theo is a remarkable, natural talker, but I can guarantee you, without ever having met his parents, that he is also benefiting from an environment in which adults speak to him all the time. I'll bet they don't use baby talk, and that they listen to him carefully, and patiently encourage him him to try again when he is not being understood. They don't finish his sentences for him. I'll also bet that there is lots of rhyming word play, nursery rhymes, and songs with gestures. And books.

Babies need to be spoken to from birth. If you watch carefully, you may occasionally have the feeling that even a very young infant is making fleeting attempts to imitate your gestures. You are not imagining this: it is the precursor of speech. By 6 months, it becomes obvious to the adults in a baby's life that babies are very social little critters. They love to imitate hand gestures, facial expressions, and the melodic contours of the language they hear. Older toddlers get joy (and social props) from imitating, as can clearly be seen in Theo's case.

Children do develop at different rates, of course, but they are often smarter and more creative than we realize...we just don't always know what they are trying to express, and sometimes we don't have the patience to truly observe.

If you have a little one in your life, please don't think that Theo's performance is a typical benchmark! I posted the clip because it is inspiring to see a little one and an adult so thoroughly engaged with each other, and mutually enjoying a brief dose of an activity a bit more creatively challenging than "Barney" or "Doodlebops".

If you do have worries that your child is lagging in language development, here is a useful developmental chart.

Never Too Early

One more installation in my series of posts pertinent to arts education, this time from the tenderest end of the spectrum (age-wise, anyway). In a fabulous send-up of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", Maggie Simpson, whilst pursuing her studies at "Mediocri-Tots Daycare Center", gets punished for being creative. It all works out in the end.

Neurodevelopment of Drawing Ability in Children

I have had a long standing interest in the development of drawing skills in young children (from a neuropsychological perspective). Of course, children vary widely in talent, creativity, willingness to take risks, and so on, but there are some very interesting and predictable developmental stages which can be tracked through children's drawings, and which reflect what is going on at the level of brain development.

The Canadian Society for Education through Art maintains an archive of school children's art produced between 1930 to 1995, some examples of which are available in an on-line gallery. The documentation supplied is not the best (ages, dates, names of the young artists are often missing, the wrong captions are attached to some images, and the archive seems to have come to a crashing halt in 1995). Nonetheless, the archive is a potential treasure trove of data for researchers interested in cognitive development, in trends in art education, and the impact of arts education on subsequent academic achievement and vocational attainment. In a previous post, I wondered about what influence the "Kate Bush experience" had on the kids in a 1981 "Razzmatazz" studio audience, and similarly, I wonder about what has become of some of the students whose art is documented in the CSEA archive. Much of the work is wonderful, and reflects not only nascent talent on the part of the children, but the influence of dedicated and inspiring teachers.

Art produced by children between the ages of 6 and 12 provides a window into a very interesting period of neurological and cognitive development. Of course, drawing ability improves developmentally along with eye-hand co-ordination, fine motor skill, kinaesthetics etc., but what is most fascinating is the way in which children's drawing ability shows us something about the developmental progression from a "modular" brain to an "integrative" brain, as the frontal lobes develop and as interhemispheric and intrahemispheric connections are reinforced and refined.

I've pulled a few examples from the CSEA archive to illustrate.


Peter, age 6, 1976, British Columbia. (felt pen)
Peter's drawing is schematic and very verbal/analytic in nature. His drawing represents what he "knows", not what he "sees". Element by element, he documents what is important to him in the scene, as if following a list of key words or concepts. Drawing at this stage seems to be a very language-mediated activity. In the scene as he saw it, for instance, the electrical outlet would have been behind the presents and hence, not visible. But to Peter, it is a very important element, and so he includes it in his drawing.


Ken Kranrod, age 8, 1977, Alberta (pencil)
Ken's drawing is very accomplished. The detail is fantastic, and each element in his drawing is a little masterpiece. However, he is not fully out of the schematic stage. While the detail is rich and far more developed than that of the 6 year old above, Ken has not quite crossed the threshold of drawing what he sees: rather, he is representing what he knows and what is important to him when he thinks about a circus. (I love the swishy action-marks he's put in to give a sense of motion to the bear's dumbells!) Perspective, size of the elements, depth of field: none of this is developed in the overall composition. In fact, the elephant appears to be standing on the bear's head. The elephant and the hippo are also drawn in a very different, cartoon-like style, and demonstrate foreshortening in a manner that is not evident elsewhere. I wonder if these were copied from one of those "how to draw animals" books that are so beloved by children at this age, as their desire to produce representational and realistic drawings for a time trumps their joy in unfettered self-expression. By way of anecdotal finding, most kids seem to go through such a stage, although I am not aware of research specific to this observation.


Lynne Dunsmuir, age 10, 1970, British Columbia (oil pastel)
At age 10, Lynne is starting draw what she sees in a more realistic, representational manner without resorting to cartoon tricks and techniques. Her drawing is less about the disparate elements of what "makes a dog", and more about integrating categorical knowledge with real experience. At age 10, she is on the cusp of a period of tremendous frontal lobe development. She's really captured "dogness" in this drawing, because her brain now has far greater integrative capacity. Stated simply, she is more able to integrate what her left hemisphere "labels" with what her right hemisphere "sees".


A. Wallace, age 12, (Year?) New Brunswick ("paint")
A.Wallace has talent, no doubt about that. She (or he) is entering a much more mature stage of neurocognitive development. Those frontal lobes are really starting to work for her! She is in a watershed period for the development of abstract thinking, flexible problem solving, and increasing capacity for empathy, delay of gratification and moral judgment: these are all related to frontal lobe maturation (which will continue on through her late teens and even early twenties). These are all highly complex and integrative cognitive functions, and are more or less unique to humans, as is the making of art.

My apologies to colleagues and readers who may object to my oversimplification of the neuroscience involved. The point I want to make overall is that between the ages of 6 and 12, a great deal is happening in a child's cognitive and neurological development, and it is happening very rapidly. Opportunities to make art, and to be taught skills of "looking" as well as "making" should not be considered a mere recreational frill or therapeutic outlet for kids in school (although that's good, too!). Evidence is mounting that training in visual literacy and in making art may literally change brain development, by promoting and enhancing connections and feedback loops between various brain regions. (This has been studied fairly extensively in the case of music). The child's neurodevelopmental stage affects their art, and conversely, the practise of art may well affect brain development.

(related posts here, and here and here)

Kate Bush Talks to Kids About Making Art

Another post on the general topic of art and education. Here is a clip from the early 80's British TV show "Razzmatazz" featuring a sweet and sincere Kate Bush talking to kids about the art, music and choreography involved in making a music video.

"I'm very lucky because my interests are actually my work, and in so many ways, any interest I have can become a part of my work...that's the wonderful thing about art...anything you do can then become your work... just keeping your mind open for all these things. It's really fun. Life becomes work."

I wonder what these children went on to do in their lives. They seem so attentive, and I cannot help but think that this experience must have been influential.

Speaking of which: Kate Bush's work would appear to have been an influence on Marcel Dzama and his skating ghosts as well. And a good influence, it is.




(video clip via, via)

Art School Advertisement

Don Novello's circa 1980's TV ad for the San Francisco Art Institute, from a time when not taking yourself too seriously was considered a virtue.

Artists, Art Education and the Academy

(AP Photo/The New York Times, Ruby Washington)

NY Times art critic and recent Pulitzer Prize winner Holland Cotter published a terrific article this February titled "The Boom is Over: Long Live Art". With characteristic optimism and genuine passion, he argues that the economic downturn may in fact be good for art and artists, who can take the opportunity to slow down, think more and take greater creative risks: "...adjust the rate of production to allow for organic growth, for shifts in purpose and direction. They can daydream and concentrate. They can make nothing for a while, or make something and make it wrong, and fail in peace, and start again." In other words, since not a lot is selling anyway, why not do as the spirit moves you, rather than bending your creative agenda in the attempt to produce work that is "sale-able". There is much truth to this argument. It is easy enough to think of artists whose work has become stale, or worse, under the pressure to produce and reproduce sale-able product.

Embedded in the article are a couple of paragraphs in which Cotter suggests that art schools might also reconsider how they teach:

"Art schools can change too. The present goal of studio programs (and of ever more specialized art history programs) seems to be to narrow talent to a sharp point that can push its way aggressively into the competitive arena. But with markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education?
Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology? Why not build into your graduate program a work-study semester that takes students out of the art world entirely and places them in hospitals, schools and prisons, sometimes in-extremis environments, i.e. real life? My guess is that if you did, American art would look very different than it does today."

Of course, he is talking about something which would operate on a deep and systemic level, beyond simply tacking a few liberal arts courses onto a program of studies so that art schools can grant bachelor's degrees instead of "mere" diplomas. The transition from art school to degree-granting University status has been a painful experience for several Canadian art schools in recent years. I have friends on faculty in some of these schools. These teachers tell me that by far their best students, and often those who display the greatest talent, are students who have done a couple of years or even a full undergraduate degree in science, liberal arts, whatever, before coming to art school. They also tell me that generally, kids attending art school fresh from high school dislike the liberal arts courses they are required to take, because they fail to see the relevance, or because they lack the academic preparation needed to make productive use of their exposure to a larger world of ideas.

"Multidisciplinary" and "interdisciplinary" are not the same things. It is enormously challenging to create a truly interdisciplinary atmosphere in an academic institution. It requires open mindedness, a setting-aside of ego and territoriality, and a willingness to take chances (*see footnote). It also requires an ability to communicate in plain English, rather than discipline-specific jargon. These qualities are in as short supply in art schools as they are in any institution. In an ideal future, perhaps we'd see not only greater interdisciplinarity within a given institution, but greater inter-institutional co-operation and collaboration. It would it be easier for students to transfer credits between institutions (and not only credits for matching courses), and there would be structures in place to facilitate cross-institutional collaboration in research, and a sharing of resources. Currently, this exists in mostly nascent form as special events or conferences, for example the Toronto's annual Subtle Technologies festival, or in superstar think tanks such as the Perimiter Institute. Hardly the stuff of everyday experience for the average undergrad, let alone grad student or even faculty member.

Buy-in to the interdisciplinary notion is made all the more difficult when it is perceived that studio hours, and entire studio programs (ceramics? glass?) are being slashed to make way for lectures in anthropology. Graduate programs in fine art can leave their participants feeling drained of all creative energies, if verbosity is rewarded over tangible productivity and development of technical skill. Allow me a deliberate non sequitur: raw Derrida is already pretty hard to chew, and it doesn't get any more nutritious when mashed up and added to art stew. It is difficult to get the recipe just right. (**see footnote)

It is curious that arguments for interdisciplinarity in art education take on a one-directional, one-sided character. Even in Cotter's essay the suggestion seems to be that artists would make better art if they had more exposure to liberal arts, science, etc. Is this is a reflection of artists' unconscious participation in creating and maintaining their own underdog status in western society? Let us frame the issue in the opposite direction, and promote the value of education in the arts for the betterment of other disciplines. Wouldn't visually literate scientists or engineers have a leg up on their more narrowly focused, less educated colleagues? Making sense of the ouroboros might only be possible in the context of a visually enriched and broadly educated psyche. I know of few concrete examples of taking interdisciplinary education in this direction, but here is one. At Harvard med school, students spend an hour a week at local museums undertaking guided study and discussion of major works of art. Improving their visual literacy is seen not only as a culturally enriching experience, but as a cognitive exercise which contributes to the development of greater powers of observation and visual discrimination, thus improving basic bedside diagnostic skills.



* David Bolduc is one of Canada's most sublime contemporary painters, and his bio provides a wonderful example of how interdisciplinarity can flourish outside the academy. Would he be the painter he is today if he had not dropped out of art school in the late 60's, taking his bedroll and camping out on Stan Bevington's sofa at Coach House Press? Would "Brick" be the same without Bolduc's contribution?

** For a fascinating thread on the worth of an M.F.A., go to this recent discussion on Joanne Mattera's blog. The discussion is relevant to the Canadian state of affairs, although thankfully, the costs of higher education are far less a factor in Canada than stateside.

School's Out for the Summer

I have been on trains and planes for the past week, shuttling between Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, attending to some important beginnings and endings in the life of my family. For a full week, I've been too preoccupied to look at art, read about art, or even open my computer. However, I had the pleasure of encountering many university students from across the country, heading home at the end of their school year. So, in honour of them, I plan to spend a bit of time this week on the subject of education in general, and art education in particular...starting with one of my favourite Pinky Show clips. It features some familiar school architecture, combined with classic Ivan Illich passages read in voice-over by a Japanese schoolgirl. Weirdly appropriate and very funny. Somehow, his commentary on the state of our educational institutions seems even more appropriate today than it did 40 odd years ago. Large class sizes, too many classes taught by sessional instructors and grad students, and graded by multiple choice rather than essay: it must be hard to keep a sense of creativity and curiosity alive for those students and professors who have a passion for knowledge, and are not afraid to learn from failure and risk. I celebrate those students who have that passion, and want them to know that in ten year's time, nobody will care or remember that they got a B- rather than an A in Art History 101.

Playing For Change

Playing for Change is a charitable organization founded by Grammy award-winning producer and engineer Mark Johnson. The foundation's mission is to "connect the world through music". The bricks-and-mortar part of the mission is to build music schools and art schools around the world. Two projects are well underway in South Africa, and the foundation has also been supporting Tibetan refugee centres in India and Nepal.

This music video produced by Playing for Change is an inspiring demonstration of the internet's creative commons philosophy at its best. "Thirty seven musicians from five continents assemble together to create one unified track. The musicians have never met in person and connect through their music. Each track is added to the song as the musicians are recorded live outside across the globe. The end result is a remarkable human connection and a powerful song."