Engagement, Art, & Often ChildrenIntensivdagarna 2012

Maria Mortati, Museum Exhibit Developer | San Francisco

Center for Creative Connections,Dallas Museum of Art

Interactive Galleries, Contemporary Wing,Baltimore Museum of Art

Fort Collins Museum of DiscoveryChildren’s Creativity Museum

FORMAL

The Giant HandMachine Project @ The Hammer Museum

The San Francisco Mobile Museum

Desire Trails Public Program,Headlands Center for the Arts

Critter Salon by Phil Ross

INFORMAL

What might interactivity -for any age- look like in a contemporary art museum?

The Giant Hand <movie> with Machine Project at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

My best practice assumptions

Yes: 21st century skills, project-based learning, life long learners, “design thinking,” etc.

Opportunities for all ages

ADA Accessible, Non-toxic, Green

Locally-made

Local partners and collaborators

Intelligent and fun

Where I think we are now

• We are moving away from a cultural stewardship model to being producers, informers, and co-creators.

• We are taking what is essentially an art and designed-based mindset into museums.

o Which, if you’re in an art museum, is closer in line with how artists work

In order to do this work, we need to have better institutional agility. What could that look like?

I may use this word a lot: Platforms

Platforms are systems that support multidisciplinary or cross-institutional projects.

Physical or conceptual frameworks that allow for the ease of exhibit development and implementation.

They can provide an infrastructure that works out the common needs for an experience

Experimental practice can be for museums:

• You don't need to wait until you have all the answers to try something out. It takes the pressure off.

• Exhibits are team-based projects… if you try small and have a rewarding experience, you can build internal competency, and also get everybody on board.

• An added plus?

• It’s inherently participatory: the public feels a sense of ownership, like they are a part of something

• It’s fun.

From Zeum to the

Children’s Creativity Museum

How do you insert a creative place for little ones in a field of technology?

--- when your first focus is on launching the brand

Understand your assets and liabilities

Young staff

Location

Architecture

Funding needs

Fallen off the radar

Young staff

Location

Architecture

Funding needs

Fallen off the radar

Understand your new audience

0 to 12 mos:

I love to look at moving light, birds, fish, changing colors.

12 to 14 mos:

This is time for independence and for me to see how far away from my parent am I willing to go?  

2 year olds:

I can talk in 2-3 sentences and can work in parallel with others.

3-4 year olds:

I know how to work in a group, and understand that I am part of a collective.

4-5 year olds:

I’m starting to collect things and draw what I see in my environment.

Before (digital)

...to analog

After (analog… with the good digital bits remaining)

Maximize creativity while meeting the needs of children, their caregivers and staff.

A DIY studio and an “MIY” platform- you’re designing for parents and children

A dress-up and role playing space with acoustics (and storage!)

A building play platform from magnets to forts & beyond, with a separate spot for the very young

A quiet spot for reading or nursing

A food truck clay play area designed to mimic what was happening in the adjacent animation studio.

2 “Cloud Gallery” mobiles for local artists to program and kids to fill

A graphical hierarchy that allowed the young staff to manage

A system that employed the brand for wayfinding but not in place of creativity.

The San Francisco Mobile Museum

What can community participation look like?

We created a system that showed up in parks, storefronts, and a museum.

We documented and treated their work honorably, and expanded upon it via the blog.

We offered on-site participation for our “visitors”

Looking for Loci

Have you ever found a place in your home, neighborhood or city, and felt an invisible energy, almost like magic? In Roman culture, this was called "Genius Loci", which referred to a location's distinctive atmosphere, or spirit. In our urban environments these places can be more difficult to find, or lost altogether– but they do exist.

The inaugural exhibit, and aninter-city collaboration

Dinah, age 6

Genius Loci: rabbit hutch

If I could go anywhere I would get shrunk down really small and live in a rabbit hutch. I would ride the bunnies all day long. And at night I would sleep with my head on their fluffy tails.

That or go to sushi.

Peter, age 50

Genius Loci: San Francisco, below grade

My box is about San Francisco's underground.. I don't mean some counter culture scene but the physical place under San Franciscans' feet.

As a gardener here for many years, I've dug in it's mostly sandy, soft soil, regularly finding an old marble or fragment of pottery--sometimes an old cast iron toy or clay bottle, even a layer of charcoal & fused glass, evidence of the 1906 earthquake & fire.

Kevin, age 36

Genius Loci: The Stock Option

One of the protective spirits of Silicon Valley is the stock option. It helps to create the environment that we love - creative & energetic people working together to build amazing things. Unfortunately the stock option can be bit of a trickster spirit, luring people away from their families with promises of riches... often only to disappoint.

Note: Kevin was recently laid off, and his stock options are worth nothing.

Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) - New Contemporary Wing

How could you engage with conceptual art?

Front-end prototyping and evaluation

Artists may not want it:

• Oh well

• Move on

Moving along:

Working with a concept across contemporary art, vs. a work of art

Finding local experts to collaborate with and realize the vision

Baltimore Museum of Art

Draft of final video - contextualizing artwork on view

Baltimore Museum of Art

Baltimore Museum of Art and Post Typography

Honoring their participation through design and display

Baltimore Museum of Art

Experimental projects: learning through art

How else can art -in all its forms- engage children?

Phil Ross’ Enormous Microscopic Evening, Machine Project at the Hammer Museum,

Los Angeles

Mark - Thanks so much, not only for the manual, machine, and tools, but also for leading an event where Tommy was just able to be himself. You probably won't be shocked to hear that Tommy doesn't always fit in easily (nor did his dad, of course, though in different ways) particularly among his age-group peers... but it was clear to him and me after the evening event that he was in a happy place. So thanks to you and Maria both.

What do you think the possibilities are for children, art, and museum experiences?

THANK YOU!

MARIA@MORTATI.COMWWW.MORTATI.COM

Maria Mortati | Intensivdagarna