Museum Studio Spaces I

When my NYC niece came to Chicago for library conference and a visit I was excited to bring her to the Chicago Children’s Museum art studio. So when I went to visit her she was excited to bring me to the Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA).

CMA is located in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. It has several studio spaces, two gallery spaces, a relaxing space, and a huge lobby.

If you look up you can see the relaxing space. Not sure how relaxing it is as it contains these unstable pieces.

At the end of the lobby hall there is an interactive art piece and the door to the right of that leads to the stART studio for children 5 and under. It has “basic art materials including playdough and flubber” and a dramatic play, music, or theater area.

This picture of the elevated space is a little weird because I was shooting through a piece of glass so you can see a reflection of the building across the street.

At the other end of the hallway is the Fine Art Studio. This space is divided in two by an amazing sink.

My niece who says they had this kind of sink in the shop at her high school demonstrates its use

There are two rotating workshops – one at each end of the studio – as well as an area where guests can draw or paint.

At this end the project was a collaborative box structure inspired by the artwork of an artist whose name I didn’t catch. You can see pictures of the artist’s box structures sitting on the table but unfortunately I didn’t get close ups.

These are the always accessible areas for painting and drawing which are in the middle behind the large sink.

On the other side of the Fine Art Studio the project “Happiness Chandeliers” was inspired by the installation that was currently in the large gallery space “Breaking the Glass Ceiling” by E.V. Day.

The Gallery space has rotating exhibits of emerging, established, or child artists that rotate several times a year. The large gallery space is also home to the Clay Bar.

The museum has another smaller gallery, a Media Lab, and a Sound Booth for teens and maintains a permanent collection of over 2000 paintings and drawings by children from over 50 countries. These can be viewed on Flickr.

The sign in the lobby says “The mission of the Children’s Museum of the Arts is to introduce children and their families to the transformative power of the arts.” The website adds “by providing opportunities to make art side by side with working artists.” In addition to the opportunities to do so at the museum and at classes and camps they also have community programs which work with underserved and at risk communities funded by the museum fees for admission and classes.