Press

The New York Times

It’s not unusual to see a guard at the entrance to a museum show. It is unusual, though, for that guard to be a Weimaraner in uniform.
Then again, nothing is ordinary about “Art Inside Out” at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. The canine official, a lifesize photo cutout by William Wegman, is one element of this huge new show, whose installations by Elizabeth Murray, Fred Wilson and Mr. Wegman were designed to take children inside the creative process.

By asking prominent artists to participate, the museum is not only presenting art inside out, but also turning the children’s museum world upside down. A typical youth museum offers science experiments, cultural artifacts, even live creatures — everything but an abundance of the original works in which adult museums specialize.

The museum deliberately chose artists with a sense of humor. “That’s a very significant part of what artists are doing: reflecting on the world in a humorous way,” said Deborah F. Schwartz, the show’s curator. “That tendency is sometimes sarcastic, sometimes cynical, but sometimes very playful.”

These installations are certainly playful. Ms. Murray’s is essentially an invitation to step inside “Plan 9,” her vibrant abstract rendering of a table setting in which the utensils seem to bend and melt like Salvador Dalí’s timepieces. In addition to the painting, the space features large cutouts of its elements. The tiniest children can rearrange these shapes on a huge surface or drop others into the patterned openings on the surface of a big cup. Older children can use computers to make their own collages of Murray’s designs, elongating them with their fingers and adding colorful brushstrokes; as they work, their paintings in progress appear on a large video screen.

The components also include other Murray artworks and clues to her imagination. Children can swish a big brush over a canvas to hear the Prokofiev and Chopin works she listens to while she paints. “They show how paintings suggest sound and involve mood,” Ms. Schwartz said.
Fred Wilson, recently selected to participate in the Venice Biennale, takes existing objects from museum collections and juxtaposes them to reveal new meanings. His installation, titled “Power Games,” is about a resonant childhood subject: bullying. “I arrange things in ways museums never would,” he said.

In one case, a white marble bust of Napoleon faces an ebony bust of a Senegalese soldier; in between are small sculptures depicting animals and prey. “In shifting these objects, you can create dialogues as well as metaphors,” Mr. Wilson said. The tableaus’ symbolic overtones — of racism, of colonialism, of cultural dominance — are not lost on young visitors. They’re invited to participate in several activities, including creating their own tableaus, mixing and matching heads and bodies on sculptures and inventing conversations for a pair of facing busts.

Mr. Wegman’s installation is a fantasy house. With dog videos in the living room, dog magnets on the refrigerator and an ancestor portrait that is a soulful canine face, it’s like a Goldilocks tale redone with Weimaraners. But his space also includes his paintings and opportunities to learn about his quirky methods.

What children may appreciate most, though, is imitating Mr. Wegman. They can create their own images with his work as inspiration, use computers to “dress up Batty” (a dog), make and watch their own videos and invent Wegmanesque scenes in a photo studio.

The results make up a show that the museum says is the first of its kind, combining original contemporary works with an invitation that children (and even some adults) find irresistible: to come in and play.

By LAUREL GRAEBER