Step Into Art™ at Stepping Stones Museum for Children

Have your kids ever wanted to curate their own gallery, create a self portrait at a designated computer station, take part in an art hunt through an exhibit and let their imaginations run wild by creating as many different images as possible at the three-dimensional Pattern Puzzle?  Now through May 12 kids can do all this and more by literally stepping inside the framework of famous paintings and experience art in Framed: Step into Art™, at Stepping Stones Museum for Children in Norwalk located on 303 West Ave.  For information www.steppingstonesmuseum.org or 203-899-0606. For area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

Mona Lisa Exhibit Minnesota Children Museum photo credit

Kids enter the special exhibit by stepping through an over-sized frame and instantly become immersed in the worlds created by well-known artists. Each work is re-created as a three-dimensional, sensory, walk-in environment that includes a print of the artist’s original work, as well as important facts about the artist’s life and painting style.

There are four featured paintings in this bi-lingual exhibit that provides a different cultural experience for participants.  Dinner for Threshers by Grant Wood for example teaches children about rural life at the turn of the century. Kids can tend to a chicken and eggs, prepare a meal in the kitchen, set the dining table, enjoy a noontime dinner, and mix and match the farmers’ patterned shirts.  The detail the featured painting provides includes theme of patterns, the farmers’ tan lines and the hour of the meal. 

John Singer Sargent’s Camp at Lake O’Hara Photo Credit: Minnesota Children Museum 

At the popular Camp at Lake O’Hara visitors are transported to the Canadian Rockies circa 1916 to the John Singer Sargent’s Camp at Lake O’Hara.  Children can climb inside a tent and explore camping gear like Sargent would have used.  After cooking a pretend meal over the campfire, kids can tell stories around the fire and arrange items in a magnetic frame to show what a painting of today’s campsite may look like. 

The Big Chicken by Clementine Hunter is a salute to Louisiana’s most famous female artist and folk art icon that creates imaginary animals like Hunter’s “goosters” by mixing body parts.  Children and adults can load the cart in this exhibit with cotton, climb behind the reins of the giant rooster and take their load to town. 

The Big Chicken  Photo Credit Minnesota Children's Museum

Travel south of the border when visiting Corn Festival by Diego Rivera through this work from the Court of Fiestas in the Ministry of Education Building in Mexico City.  Kids will have fun exploring a rendition of one of Rivera’s frescos while adding their own whimsical flourishes such as flowers and ribbons of “corn husks” to the flower tower and on a miniature building’s mural.

About Framed: Step Into Art™ 

Framed: Step Into Art™ was created by the Minnesota Children’s Museum for the members of the Youth Museum Exhibit Collaborative (YMEC): Bay Area Discovery Museum, Boston Children’s Museum, Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, Children’s Museum of Memphis, Long Island Children’s Museum, Minnesota Children’s Museum and Stepping Stones Museum for Children.  The exhibit is sponsored locally by Xerox Foundation.

 About Stepping Stones Museum for Children

Stepping Stones Museum for Children is an award winning, private, non-profit 501 (c)(3) children’s museum committed to broadening and enriching the lives of children and families. For more information about Stepping Stones, to book a field trip or schedule a class, workshop or facility rental call 203-899-0606 or visit www.steppingstonesmuseum.org.  The museum is open daily 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.