“MoMA Unadulterated”, What do kids know about art?

“MoMA Unadulterated” was created by Audio Tour Hack. According to their website, “Audio Tour Hack is a collection of artists and professionals from the communications industries who have come together to use creative storytelling to send people on fun, unexpected and interactive journeys.” For this hack, they chose a bunch of kids ages 3 – 10 and took them to MoMA. They then asked them to give their opinions “on such things as composition, the art’s deeper meaning, and why some stuff’s so weird looking”. They’ve got audio recordings of kids talking about the art of Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein among others.

Predictably, most of the kids say that the art should not be in a museum because it’s just a bunch of “lines and dots and anybody could do it”. One of my favorite comments was “do you think anybody would buy a big glob of paint for $100?”. Another good comment about Andy Warhol’s work was that “he actually stabs people with broccoli”. Like broccoli, contemporary art is a somewhat acquired taste. At some point they’ll realize that the whole visual world is a bunch of lines, dots, shapes and colors. It’s how you put them together that matters. I did enjoy their comments which were innocently insightful at times.

We did some photography recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I think the kids would find more to appreciate there. I’d like to show these photos to the kids and hear what they have to say.