Art Gets Canine For Kids

Clare Henry talks to the team behind the children's exhibition 'Art Inside Out'

By CLARE HENRY
Children and animals are always a winning combination and the re are plenty of both at New York's groundbreaking Dollars 750,000 exhibition, Art Inside Out. The dogs are by photographer William Wegman, one of three artists who have accepted the Children's Museum of Manhattan's invitation not only to exhibit but be closely involved in a show.

Wegman is famous for his photographs of his Weimaraner dogs dressed up as people. His first dog Man Ray, was bought for Dollars 35 in 1970. "He loved games and he absolutely knew about the camera," says Wegman. His four-legged character actors now include Man Ray's offspring, Chundo, Batty, Crooky and Chip, who feature in his complex tableaux vivants dressed in ridiculous wigs and jeans, high heels or ballgowns.

The second artist, Fred Wilson, has just been selected to represent the US at next year's Venice Bienniale. He uses found objects and ready-mades to tell stories about the past, about slavery, racism, power and black politics.

While both artists show how art can be created from unconventional materials, painter Elizabeth Murray uses traditional oils. However, her jazzy and joyfully shaped canvases and wacky cartoon-style works are far removed from dark Old Masters.

"We wanted diverse artists tackling different styles in different media so that children could see art isn't only one thing," says curator Deborah Schwartz, deputy education director at MoMA. "We also wanted to convey the relationship between process and inspiration, how artists come up with ideas. People should feel comfortable with art. It plays a big role in life." Director Andrew Ackerman adds that research shows that children who lack a rich bank of early images, both verbal and visual, find it harder to learn."

Before the experts got started on this show, a group of children met Wegman and Murray in their studios and Wilson at his gallery. "As far as my section is concerned most of the ideas for the exhibition came out of what the kids said in the studio," says Murray. "I had several works out but somehow they all gravitated to 'Plan Nine', a large oil I did last year showing table -top, spoons, forks. It was not what I expected them to choose."

Murray, who has also done lots of teaching, adds: "The idea - demystifying art, making it more accessible - appealed to me. It's great for kids to get the feeling art is about play and you can play with it. However, exposing your work in this kind of way can be tricky."

Murray's work is known for its buoyancy, colour and cartoonish shapes derived from domestic objects - cups, tables, doorknobs, shoes, pillows - which take on a life of their own. Murray says: "Cartoons were the first art I saw. I loved them. I had favourite artists - the Disney artist who drew Donald Duck with lots of detail, Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, Superman." Since 1975 she has used unusually shaped canvases, "first, simple trapezoids, elongated diamonds, but they gradually became more complex and three-dimensional. Five years ago they ballooned so far off the wall that they were more like reliefs and were harder and harder to paint. The thing I'm into is painting. So now the shapes are flat."

Murray believes that Wilson's work is the most successful for this show: "It's intellectual, but not beyond the kids' grasp." One example, "Childhood", is a simple small arrangement of white porcelain figures in front of a single isolated black boy. Other Wilson works are installations of actual 19th-century bronzes and sculptures - including a bust of Napoleon, borrowed from the Brooklyn Museum. One interpretation using wooden egg-shapes encouraged kids children to evoke concepts like loneliness or a bad day at school.

However, overall, the children favour Wegman. The artist invited children to a photo session, to see how he achieves his images. Says Schwartz: "In the exhibition we created a stage-set style 'home', peopled by Wegman's dogs, where visitors can go from kitchen to studio to bedroom and not only see his canine friends in bed, but make their own digital pictures."

Schwartz also included some early Wegman black-and-white videos, which she says the children didn't like. "Kids should know they don't have to like everything in an exhibition, nor should they expect to. As long as it makes you think, it's OK." But, to the organisers' surprise the children loved Wegman's abstract work.

In an age when "Don't touch" signs proliferate in galleries and museums, it's a delight to find a show that cries out for hands-on involvement.

ART INSIDE OUT, Children's Museum of Manhattan, until December 2003.
Tel: +1-212-721 1223. www.cmom.org
Copyright 2002 The Financial Times Limited; Financial Times (London); November 6, 2002, Wednesday USA Edition 1