by Susan Hibberd

Created on: May 24, 2009

Children are born curious. They want to know and they want to learn - and what better place for them to do that than at an art exhibition or a museum?

A trip to a museum or art exhibition can be boring for a child, but this doesn't have to be the case. Choose your destination, plan the trip, and you child will not only enjoy the day, but he will learn to love learning which is the best skill you can ever give a child.

Here are some tips on making a trip to an art exhibition or museum a pleasant experience for children and parents alike:

Choose carefully

Choose which museum or gallery you are going to go to. Some of the older museums are still dark, musty and badly laid out. Avoid these, and aim for the more modern museums that are bright, light and child-friendly.

If you are looking at art galleries, choose one that has works appropriate to the age of your child. Take smaller children to sculpture parks where they can touch the exhibits or to works by contemporary artists using bold, bright colors. If your child likes horses, try to find an exhibition of works by Stubbs orother artists known for their horse paintings.

Don't take all day

Start by making your trips to galleries and museums short and sweet. An hour is long enough for a small child, not only in terms of keeping their attention, but from a physical point of view as well. There is a lot of walking involved in some museums, and the subdued lighting can make a child very tired.

Be enthusiastic

If you don't like art galleries or museums yourself, try to find someone else to take your child along. To get a child interested in something, you need to show interest yourself, so find something you are keen on, or ask a friend or relative to take them.

Pick a subject that you yourself really love. Your pleasure in seeing the art will rub off on your child.

Think laterally

An art exhibition doesn't have to be paintings, and a museum doesn't have to be exhibits in cases. Remember that everything is new to a young child, and when you start taking them round to galleries and exhibitions almost everything will be outside their experience anyway.

Take your child to exhibitions of glass, ceramics, textiles and paper as well as traditional paintings. Point out architectural features and garden designs as you walk around.

Look at some of the more contemporary museums, and consider visiting these. Exhibitions about the 1960s, classic cars, 1940s costume, or the natural history of South America are all as valid as exhibitions on Saxon England or the Egyptians.

Check out the Internet for tourist information sites that tell you where museums are. You might even find some small less well-known museums in your own town that you haven't visited before!

Learning to learn

Remember that a visit to an art gallery or museum is as much about teaching your child how to look, react to and critique the work as it is about learning facts about the past. While your child is young, you should be teaching them how to appreciate artifacts from the past, and consider how people lived and worked, to wonder at the size of a sculpture or the delicacy of hand-made lace.

Facts can be learnt at school, from the Internet or from books. You should concentrate on expanding your child's sense of wonder at the world around them.

A trip to an art exhibition or a museum should be a pleasure, not a chore. Go often, and for short visits so that you cover a wide range of subjects. You child will soon be asking you when the next trip is going to be!

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