Museum Monday: Vincent van Gogh

Last week M and I began our first true "Museum Monday" visit at the Van Gogh museum.  I picked this for our first art museum visit for several reasons:  interesting art, story appealing to children, and close to home.

Sure, M has been to art museums before, but this would be  little different from his infant visits to the Met and his more recent visits to the Cloisters.  The Cloisters has more objects than paintings, plus the cool knight theme going on.  Looking back, I think his many visits to the Cloisters (as well as countless visits to libraries) helped him to understand "museum etiquette":  quiet voices, no touching, etc.  I set some low expectations for the attention span (30-60 minutes of art looking, then on to the cafe and we could quit whenever M indicated he was done).  It actually went pretty well.


We looked at art for about 45 minutes.  A lot of this involved moving among the different galleries, so the actual art gazing was more like 10-15 minutes, and involved M making up a lot of stories, like, "this is a picture of flowers, from when they first invented flowers..."  But, later that day I was really pleased that, when asked some questions about our day M could recollect:

1. We went to the Vincent van Gogh museum
2. Vincent van Gogh was an artist who painted
3. One interesting thing about Vincent van Gogh was that he cut off part of his own ear.

I'm also fairly certain M could recognize Van Gogh's self portrait, since we spent a lot of time looking at both the oversized version by th entrance and the picture on the brochure.  And he thoroughly enjoyed the giant ice cream he got in the cafe.  I think we will go back at some point.  They have an audio tour specifically designed for children (6 and over, but I'd like to try it in a few months with M).

Museum Monday: NEMO

Peter recently took a day off and we went to NEMO, Amsterdam's science museum, as a family.  While there, we bought our Museumkaarts, a card that for 40 Euro provides access into 400 museums in the Netherlands.  Having a card like this changes one's relationship to museums.  Instead of feeling like you have to see everything to get your 12.50 worth, suddenly you can go to a museum for an hour, anytime you want.  This was a relationship that I also enjoyed living in Washington, D.C., where most of the museums are free of charge.

I have decided to get the most out of our Museumkaarts, taking M to a different museum every Monday since he doesn't go to school on Mondays.  It's a tall order, taking a 4-year-old to a museum, but I figure we'll start slow, spending a half hour at the museum and then hitting the cafe.  M gets introduced to museums and a new feature on My 'dam Adventure is born:  Museum Monday.

So, our trip to NEMO was exhausting.  It's a long-ish tram ride from our Neighborhood and a long-ish walk from the tram stop.  Once we got there M was so stimulated he bounced from exhibit to exhibit like a pinball.  The museum itself was interesting, if aimed at a bit of an older audience than the preschool set.

There were a couple of really interesting exhibits, including a hands-on one about water that M loved.  We also spent some time in the Wonder Lab, first doing an experiment about color, which kind of bored M, then experimenting on the absorbancy of kitty litter, which was VERY difficult to clean up.  There's a great cafe on the ground floor, and a really crap one, albeit with an amazing view, on the top floor.  In short, the day was exhausting, but M loved it, and I'm sure he'd want to go back.