They use child labor at LACMA’s Boone Gallery
Give a kid a box of crayons and she’ll create for a day. Give her a Rolodex of ideas and she’ll create for a lifetime.
They have such a Rolodex at “Construct,” the participatory architecture exhibit at LACMA West’s Boone Children’s Gallery that revamped its schedule this month. A child picks out a “client card,” says Karen Satzman, manager of art classes and family programs, and the constructive mayhem ensues.
“It will say something like, ‘A giraffe wants an igloo; I need to design something for him.’ And [she] will think about the materials and height and that kind of stuff. They can draw that either two-dimensionally, on paper, or they can go into the art studio and build this, three-dimensionally. Or they can make up their own ideas.”
Whatever the children create, it hangs around the gallery. “Construct” is, above all things, interactive.
Satzman and the people at LACMA West are placing emphasis on open-ended problem-solving because children “are inspired by the environment” of freewheeling and collaborative creativity. When the exhibit works best, the projects pull in the youngsters -- who range from toddlers to teens -- as well as their parents.
(A new Friday night directed at teens features bands and DJs -- Satzman reports sightings of high school students hanging out and doing homework, a phenomenon she hopes will be widely replicated.) Social learning results, and the fanciful creations -- no matter how wrong-headed or “stupid” -- ultimately enhance the milieu.
“We also have a city street laid out -- Wilshire Boulevard -- that they can help to rebuild. A lot of the kids will either add their constructions to that or they’ll look at the street and think about what it needs,” Satzman says. “If you look at it right now, Wilshire Boulevard has been rebuilt so that it has a giant skateboard park, a swimming pool -- a lot of things the Miracle Mile currently does not have.”
The Boone Gallery has new hours, now closing at 6 p.m. -- except on Wednesdays, when all of LACMA West is closed. But to make up for it, “Construct” opens before the museum on Thursdays, at 9 a.m., to let those with early rising itty-bitty kiddies get a jump on the day.
-- Donnell Alexander
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CONSTRUCT
WHERE: Boone Children’s Gallery, LACMA West, 6067 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.
WHEN: Noon-6 p.m. Mon.-Tue., 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Thu., noon-9 p.m. Fri., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun.
PRICE: Free
INFO: (323) 857-6010; www.lacma.org/programs/Boone.aspx
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