Visiting Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago: Kids Interacting with Art

I was thrilled to see my daughters interacting with art at Ernesto Neto exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. His piece, Water Falls from My Breast to the Sky, 2017, is textile art along with other materials including wood, polyurethane foam, and lavender.

I wasn’t familiar with Ernesto Neto and I learned that is one of the most prominent artists to come out of Brazil in the past 20 years. He creates an immersive environment for all the senses. This piece allows the viewer to climb in, smell the lavender, as well as view the three stories of knitted organic shape than cocoons into a nest at the bottom.

His piece of blue, yellow, and green yarns reflects the Brazilian flag. He invites the viewer in, allowing them to enter the installation by climbing in to lie down for a view up to the top. There scented herbs and seeds that give off a pleasant scent. The cocoon structure, which requires you to remove shoes before entering, also feels like a nice place to lie down for a nap though there are usually people waiting to enter.

Interacting with art makes it accessible for kids who don’t necessarily like art museums like my middle child. I also like how she can view art as non-traditional paint-on-a-canvas. Art can also be anything imagined from common everyday materials like yarn.

This reminded me of finger knitting! A fun project for kids would be to finger knit their own art piece. Perhaps their piece will invite interaction with the audience as well!

My kids were actually there to see Virgil Abloh “Figures of Speech” exhibit. Virgil Abloh is an architect, designer and creative director for Kanye West. He is the founder and designer for his label Pyrex Vision and OFF-WHITE.

They were all familiar with his streetwear — I wasn’t — and thought he was a big deal. Is streetwear art or clothes? Is it couture or for the people? Virgil Abloh’s exhibit showed that it was all of these things.

I liked how they experienced his art by watching a video of him that was part of the exhibit where he describes his art and his journey. They were also able to touch his art as clothing for sale at the pop-up store.

My daughter just had her first day of classes at RISD yesterday. After visiting art museums in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris, she was tired of fine art being defined primarily by white, European men. Her art history class examines what fine art is in the modern world and steps away from this common paradigm of art. She couldn’t be happier. Art is for everyone and by everyone. That’s how we saw art here at the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago. And, apparently, it’s how RISD does too!

To examine any book more closely at Amazon, please click on image of book.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply