Washington Winter Show 2016

51 This page is sponsored by Tammie Collins and Jennifer Rooney in honor of The Founders Board of St. John's Community Services Figure 4: Family Guide: American Art at the National Gallery of Art, 6. requirement of a successful family guide is perhaps the most elusive: the imagination to recover in our adult minds what young audiences find exciting. Children think differently than we do. How do we connect with them in an art gallery? Or in a historic house like Gunston Hall? In the National Gallery project, our goal as educators was to be informative and engaging. We wanted to avoid dry, didactic language and, instead, get our learning points across in directions for action. This approach is illustrated in the sample activities that are described below. Because looking and analysis were channeled into creative exercises, children came to understand big ideas without being confronted with a bewildering—and attention-killing—set of abstract concepts. Most significant to the success of the family guides was this incorporation of art historical information into the instructions that children followed to take some action, whether it was to locate certain objects within a gallery or a painting, write a short description, or make a sketch. Text in the guides was streamlined to maximum concision and geared to the children’s interest level. Specific dates and events were avoided. Rather than supply facts, the guides prompted long, close looking and discussion, followed by active tasks. Activities succeeded best when they focused on things children find fascinating, other children, for example, or animals and nature—or sometimes the macabre. It is also important to remember that young audiences are not very patient and want to keep moving ahead. Once they received their booklets, the test Figure 3: Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn — On the Hudson River, 1860, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Avalon Foundation.