NettoCollection Blog

Bigthink

Check out this intelligent, stimulating, and thoughtful website where a wide, wide range of leaders and thinkers, including Jim Lehrer, Moby, Richard Branson, and Anna Deavere Smith, talk about what's important to them and to the world. This is just the blog, the site will launch in January, but this amuse-bouche has got us hungry for a whole bigthink dinner.

by Winsome

How to Take Your Father to the Museum, Part 3

Here are some highlights of a 5-year-old's recent visits to the Met. Walk with us to...

The Astor Court

Now we go upstairs to what turns out, somewhat surprisingly, to have been Kate's favorite stop on the Metropolitan Museum grown-ups/kids equal-rights tour. Climb the big staircase and walk back toward Fifth Avenue, then travel north along the second-floor Asian galleries. You will walk through many rooms full of mysterious and exotic things, with your 5-year-old just starting to get bored, to a Chinese courtyard, which is like entering another world. This is the Astor Court, a reconstruction of a 16th-century Ming garden. There is a koi pond with enormous fish that kids are drawn to, but I think it's the surprise of finding this impressive, serene, skylit, and seemingly secret outdoor space after trudging through gallery after gallery that elates them. And of course, the unexpected sound of water. But after all the fun stuff -- angels, knights -- things you think a child would relate to better because of their familiarity, this was Kate's favorite. She told me this long after I thought she had forgotten about it. In other words, a child will like it for the same reason we do -- the strangeness and sense of magical peace, all by surprise. The Met is full of those moments.

How to Take Your Father to the Museum, Part 2

Here are some highlights of a 5-year-old's recent visits to the Met. Walk with us to...

Arms and Armor (or as Kate calls it, "Knights")

After this incredible experience, walk over to the Arms and Armor galleries, on the ground floor very close to where the Christmas tree is. This is a good one for a rainy day for some reason. Maybe because it makes the empty suits look spookier. I am hardly the first parent to discover his child's interest in medieval knights and armor, but I was a little surprised at how quickly Kate got into the very adult displays in the gallery and looked at the details as much as the big idea. Velvet pants ("Knights wore underwear?"). Lots of intricate gold tooling on armor for a young king ("How was it made?"). The realization that people were much smaller in the Middle Ages than now, which a 5-year-old might even notice before you do. This is one of those places that are perfect for a child once a certain interest in knights and castles has taken root. While she's busy playing with toy ones, you might say, "Want to go see a real Black Knight?" and surprise her.

By David
Originally published on CHILD.com
Photos courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

How to Take Your Father to the Museum, Part 1

The Wonders Within

Last year Child voted New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art the second most kid-friendly museum in the country. Not only does it have family guides for the galleries designed to make the content understandable to kids, but it offers classes where children can make things of their own and discover the riches of art history.

But here's why I think the Met should be number one. Unlike many museums, it's a wonderful place for small children even if you don't get into all the programming designed for them. Parents may not know this at first. But the research for my survey was done by my 5-year-old daughter, Kate, and while I did bring her and walk her around with a little guidance, the opinions are hers. You may be surprised that none of her favorites are part of the Met's efforts specifically to reach out to kids -- we haven't even done any of that yet. They are just things in the museum itself that have always been there that make the Met more kid-friendly than maybe it knows. Wander around and you will find them. The point of my story is that we saw things my daughter would enjoy because I stopped thinking like a parent and just walked in with her so she found them. Here are some highlights of a 5-year-old's recent visits to the Met. Since it's the right time of year, walk with us to...