memkids.com

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Camille Pissaro Exhibit)
1934 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
901-544-6200

Admission is pay-what-you-can on Wednesdays. Otherwise it is $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, $6 for youth and students and children age 7 and under are free. The museum is closed on Mondays and generally opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 4 p.m., with late hours on Thursday nights.

At what age do you introduce children to art? My four-year-old daughter spends hours drawing, coloring and painting. I wouldn’t say she has a great talent, but it is something that keeps her attention and she’s taken to telling me she wants to be an artist when she grows up. I decided to test the waters and take her and my two-year-old son to see the Pissaro exhibit at Brooks. I deliberately went on Wednesdays, which are not only free, but often filled with school tours (and if you think toddlers are loud and uncouth, you haven’t been in a place filled with teenagers).

Last time we went, the kidlets were strapped into a stroller and I did a quick drive through of the art. A few things caught their attention — the bold, abstract modern art pieces and a few of the realistic and large religious paintings. This time around, neither was in a stroller and I headed purposefully down the stairs specifically to view the Pissaro exhibit.

Camille Pissarro was one of the Impressionist painters who hung around with Monet and Cezanne and helped start an entire art movement. The Brooks does an excellent job of providing pamphlets that makes the art interesting and engaging to children. They have “Family Activity Guides” placed throughout the museum that are almost like a teacher’s book on the artwork. They’ve put one together for the Pissaro exhibit and I highly recommend picking it up as you move through the exhibit.

These are a few of the questions or discussion points the handout asks about just one of the paintings (Hoarfrost at Ennery):

• What is the first thing you notice in this painting
• What do you think those lines are across the picture? Can you tell they are shadows?
• What colors did the artist use to paint the shadows? Are they just one color? …. etc

With my little ones, we used just one question for each of the paintings, but we looked very close at the paint and talked a lot about color and what there was to like or dislike about the pictures. We weren’t as quiet as I think many of the patrons would have liked, but we weren’t rambunctious and obnoxious either. We also recevied a warnign for getting too close to one of the pictures ….

Overall, though, it was a successful trip and I really enjoyed showing my daughter what it meant to be an artist. I know we’ll be back and I hope the other visitors don’t mind too much that it is hard for a two-year-old and a four-year-old to whisper the entire time they are in a musuem.

I also want to say the museum had a special display of Ernest Withers photographs on display that was particularly outstanding and moving considering the recent death of Withers. The Brooks has a fine collection of his work. I would have liked to spend more time …. but I’d worn the kidlets out with Pissaro.