ARTS FOR AMATEURS : Children Learn an Illuminating Lesson in Getty Museum Course

For the average neon-loving 8-year-old, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s upcoming class, “Lights, Mirrors and Reflections,” may seem at first glance totally unilluminating. But partly because the class is taught in a sort of self-help treasure-hunt style, most youngsters will find it surprisingly interesting.

The one-day class is designed to teach children how designers and architects maximized interior light in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Cathy McCarty-Procopio, the museum educator who teaches the free class, has designed it to give students a reward for looking carefully, for taking the time to puzzle out a purpose for what they see. She also wants to make the experience what she calls a “point of contact”--a way of getting to know another member of the family better. She says that by looking at and discussing art together, people learn something important about each other.

The children are given background information but are also forced to figure out the purposes of the design and architectural features as if they were amazing clues to the past--which of course they are.

A small group of 8- to 12-year-olds will scurry through the Getty galleries looking for clues to how 18th-Century rooms were made brighter without electricity. The children and their parents for the first time can capture infinity together, seeing what happens when two mirrors hang directly opposite each other, creating an infinite corridor.

The class begins with the children making a list of electricity-dependent activities that they do on a typical Saturday night. Amazed at how much in their lives depends on the relatively recent invention of electricity, the group then talks about what the world must have been like 200 and 300 years ago, when reading and partying, eating and dancing took place with only candles and fireplaces fending off the darkness. The class talks about why designers and architects had to maximize the light that was available by using mirrors, gold, silver, and glass, and then finds examples of what such objects look like and why they work.

McCarty-Procopio shares some curiously designed examples with the group. For example, she shows the children a clock with a string attached. What does it have to do with light? Well, she says, you can’t read the time in a dark room so, to conserve a candle, people just pulled the string and the clock struck the nearest hour. It’s just like calling the phone company’s time service in the dark.

The class concludes with a flashlight experiment in which each participant tests the varying degree of reflection that different materials provide. Turning a wheel, children can check out tin foil, gold foil, sandpaper and veneer for their reflectivity.

Jonathan Brooks, 11, and his mother, Cynthia, 43, of Reseda, have been to five of the museum’s family programs and plan to attend this one. Jonathan says he likes the classes because he learns things that he couldn’t possibly hear about anywhere else.

“When I see furniture now, even in people’s homes, I ask myself if it has any qualifications of being old or new,” he said. Jonathan says he loves the search itself, racing to figure out answers to tough, unusual questions.

Sometimes, says Jonathan’s mother, the wording of the class work sheet is “pretty heavy going for elementary kids.” So she reads the questions aloud to Jonathan and, after he figures out the answers, he dictates them back to her to fill in.

Cynthia Brooks’ hope is that by regularly attending the classes, Jonathan will come to see the museum as his own, as a special place he’s eager to come back to.

“Lights, Mirrors and Reflections” will be taught from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. Preregistration required, but this class is full. Call (213) 459-7611, Ext. 300. This course is one of many offered by the museum. For information about future programs, send your name and address to Public Information, J. Paul Getty Museum, P.O. Box 2112, Santa Monica 90407-2112.