Museums // Current

Through Stills of Life... The Annenberg Space for Photography

Los Angeles has long been home to a vibrant museum culture, and its newest flagship... more

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The Morandi Museum opens, with a series of new masterpieces

The Bolognese museum reopens after a remodeling. The exhibit itinerary has been... more

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The Italgas museum is remodeled to speak of Italian development

The company re-opens its museum in Turin following remodeling work. The exhibit... more

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The Capitoline Museums make room for the Middle Ages

The new exhibit space has been inaugurated, dedicated to Medieval life at the... more

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Tip for taking young children to a museum

This article discusses a fun way to engage young children during a trip to an art... more

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When Schools Cut Arts: How Parents Can Pick Up The Slack

"How do you instill an appreciation for the arts in your kids, thereby enlarging their creative and critical-thinking skills while deepening their enjoyment of life?

The question has added urgency at the moment. The statewide education budget crunch has prompted many cash-strapped schools to cut back on programs in music, theater, dance, photography, and the visual arts. In February, a report by the Boston Foundation found that as students in Boston’s 143 public schools move into the higher grades, their access to arts programs of all kinds sharply diminishes.

For parents who want to pick up the slack and shoulder the role of arts advocate and educator, one place to start is exactly where Martin’s mother began: in the home. The first art to develop is the art of looking. Martin says parents should foster “a visual awareness of your surroundings’’ within their children. “Think of looking games as something to do when you’re walking. ‘How many colors can you find in this landscape? What story can we tell each other about this picture?’ ’’ she says. “Think about opportunities to engage your kids with the visual world.’’

While you’re doing that, stock an “art shelf’’ or an “art box’’ with plenty of construction paper, markers, fabric scraps, and old magazines (for cutting pictures out of). That way, when inspiration strikes your child, he or she will have the tools at hand to execute their vision.

The next step is to take them to a museum, so they can see how the pros do it. The MFA offers activity sheets for children, called “Art Connections,’’ that allow them to explore “Mythical Creatures, Powerful Figures, Flowers, Cats, or Writing.’’ Also available at the museum are art classes for kids, a visiting guide replete with “gallery games,’’ a family audio guide, and a “Family Art Cart’’ for children ages 4 and older.

Martin advises parents to build field trips with their kids around a theme. For instance, using the MFA’s self-guiding “Art Connections,’’ parents and children could follow the theme of “Writing in Art’’ from a cuneiform inscription dating to ancient Assyria to an inscribed golden bowl in the early-Greece gallery to the Egyptian funerary arts gallery.

“What you want in visiting a museum is a balance of focus and freedom,’’ says Martin. “Affirm your child’s observations. ‘Ah, so you’re noticing the brushstrokes are short and choppy. Oh, so you think the bird is about to eat the worm.’ ’’

An appetite for the performing arts can likewise be kindled at home, according to Kimberly Haack, director of student programs at the Boston Conservatory, which trains students in theater, music, and dance.

That’s how it worked for Haack: When she was a child, her mother would play the cast albums from “South Pacific’’ and “West Side Story,’’ and Haack and her twin sister would sing along and act out the scenes. “It started for me with the music,’’ she says. “Music is the one thing that sticks around through thick and thin. Instilling that in your child is hugely important.’’""How do you instill an appreciation for the arts in your kids, thereby enlarging their... more

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The Best Hidden Gems of New York City: Trip on a Deal Ep. 15

http://wwwtriponadeal.com: Planning a trip to the Big Apple? We want to help you... more

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A Holiday in Iraq? + Vocation Vacations & The World's Largest Pool: Trip on a Deal Ep. 14

http://wwwtriponadeal.com: We follow tourists who are vacationing in war torn Iraq.... more

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WHACKO-TV INTERPRETING WOOD

Truman Oscar Wilde comes to WHACKO-TV from the Corporation for Cultural Programming to... more

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NYC inspirational paintings 101: Where can I find the top 5 must-see inspirational paintings in NYC?

Top 5 must-see paintings while visiting New York City

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Colleges Gut Arts Departments as Money Dries Up

"If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los... more

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A Legacy of War: Fake Art in Vietnam

"Even the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum here doesn’t know how many of the artworks and artifacts under his care are genuine and how many are extremely skillful copies. But he says he is going to try to find out.

There are nearly 20,000 of these mystery objects, on the walls and in storage, including paintings, sculpture, lacquerware, pottery, ancient statues and traditional crafts.

“We are making efforts to have a comprehensive review of items on display and in our warehouse,” said the director, Truong Quoc Binh. “After we evaluate the whole exhibit, we will try to label them all to show if they are original or not.”

Mr. Binh has been addressing questions about authenticity a lot lately. Curators and artists have been aware of the issue for years, but it became a matter of public discussion only in April, when it was raised at a conference on copyright in Danang.

In large part, the confusion is a legacy of the war with the United States, which ended in 1975, and to a lesser extent of a brief border war fought with China in 1979.

In the late 1960s, fearing that the United States would bomb Hanoi, then the capital of North Vietnam, museum officials removed hundreds of important artworks for safekeeping in the countryside.

To replace them on the museum walls, it commissioned copies: some by the original artists, some by the artists’ apprentices, some by skilled copyists in the museum’s restoration department. They were brilliant reproductions — or variants, as the Vietnamese called those paintings copied by the original artists.

But now “it’s a disaster,” said Bui Thanh Phuong, the son of Bui Xuan Phai, a prominent painter. “Viewers can’t be sure if what they are looking at is genuine or fake.” Mr. Phuong said he does not know which of the museum’s seven paintings attributed to his father, who died in 1988, are real.

In some cases it was apparently not even clear whether the originals or their copies were sent into hiding, said Nguyen Do Bao, the former chairman of the Hanoi Fine Arts Association, who delivered the paper that gave rise to the controversy at the copyright conference in April.

“There was no oversight,” Mr. Bao said in an interview. “When the artists took them home, they could make more than one copy. They could keep the original. We had no way of knowing.”

At the conference he told the audience, “Owing to poor management, the museum lost many original artworks during this time,” and added that researchers had not been allowed to examine works “while the public doesn’t know that they are reproductions.”

Asked in the interview why he was bringing up the issue now, after so many years of public silence, he said, “Now we have more freedom and democracy and we want to raise our voices to make sure the museum is not displaying copies.”""Even the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum here doesn’t know how many of the... more