My daughter and I looking at Fernand Léger, Two Women
Somewhere in my second year of grad school, I realized that I would not be getting my PhD and becoming a world renowned curator. Instead I wanted to teach about art; its history, its beauty, its makers, its cultural meaning and importance to our world. When I got my first full-time job at the Smithsonian, I started volunteering for the education department and as luck would have it, a position opened and I got the job! I took on the role of educator for docents and tours at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries. As part of the job, I completed gallery teacher training and regularly gave tours. To my surprise, I was really good at it. I couldn’t get enough of it and the kids seemed to respond well to me.
The Freer and Sackler had a multiple visit program with DC Public Schools at the time. Educators and artists would go to the school and give a lesson, i.e. Chinese calligraphy, Japanese tea ceremony. Following each school visit, the kids would come to the museum where they would see art related to their lesson. What I discovered was that most of these kids had never been to a museum before.. I was really excited to give them the opportunity to visit an art museum, feel comfortable and have fun. And lets admit it, art museums don’t always give off that comfortable, fun vibe to kids. It feels really great to introduce people to art for the first time and have them enjoy it. You feel like you have opened a door to a new world. That was the initial seed for Art Within Reach.
Then my daughter came along and being the first-time mommy that I was, I was quite certain that she would be familiar with all of DC’s art museums by the time she was six months old. Not so! Besides the realities of motherhood setting in, I realized that there wasn’t a whole lot out there for my little one. I was enrolled in a workshop at the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center (leaders in object based learning for early childhood audiences) and it inspired me to cultivate this idea in my head. I wanted to fill the void in children’s activities in the DC area! There are music classes, sport classes, art (making) classes, dance classes, yoga classes; you name it. However, when it came to art museum programs or art appreciation classes for kids under 8, the list was limited; a travesty if you consider all the art museums DC has to offer. (I should pause here to mention that museum’s often don’t have the means to hire an education department large enough to support offering quality programming to audiences of all ages. And there is no denying that our little rug rats present their own set of challenges!)
My hope is to provide a fun first-time experience with art that will ultimately lay the foundation for a lifetime of interest in the arts, visual and otherwise.
Do you know of early childhood art appreciation/history programs, let me know.
For more information about early childhood programs in our area, visit;
National Museum of African Art
For more information about museum-based programs for early childhood audiences, visit our Museum Tours page.
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Tags: activities for kids in Washington DC, art appreciation, art classes DC, art education for kids, art history children, DC art museums, DC museums for kids, early childhood education, museum education
