From a parking garage that looks like a Rolls-Royce grille to an animal shelter that resembles a droopy-earred dog, Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman has done more than his share of buildings as cartoons. But there’s nothing cartoonish about his design for a new children’s exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago.
The show and its setting are equally sophisticated–playful but not sugar-coated, accessible without being condescending. Unlike those dry-as-dust college survey courses, this version of Art 101 offers a lucid, often fun introduction, while driving home the message that painting and sculpture can prompt self-discovery as powerfully as a good story. It may not be as whiz-bangingly interactive as a video arcade, but the show has plenty of hands-on activity, including a puppet stage and touch screen computers, to engage kids and their parents.
Two regrets: First, the museum is targeting the exhibition to 7- to 12-year-olds when surely it would appeal to those older than 21; Tigerman even says it’s designed to bring out the kid in adults. Second, there’s no wall text to explain Tigerman’s installation for the show, though there is, of course, text about the art itself. As a result, the show’s unstated suggestion that architecture is as much of an art as sculpture and painting is likely to be lost on many young viewers, not to mention adults. On the other hand, maybe that’s just an architecture critic’s lament. At least the show presents art in a colorful context that is at times dazzling. The same can’t be said of most museum installations, which give new meaning to the word bland.
On view since Sept. 22 at the Kraft Education Center and scheduled to be displayed through fall 1999, “Telling Images: Stories in Art” showcases six works from the museum’s permanent collection. Fittingly, because children are the primary audience, the material is non-abstract. There are familiar mythological images (paintings of Rip Van Winkle and Saint George Killing the Dragon); exotic art from other cultures (a bronze statue of the Hindu deity Vishnu and a carved elephant tusk from Nigeria); and material by Chicago artists (a painting of a racially segregated train station, and a montage of photos from family albums and thrift stores that its Hispanic-American artist scanned into a computer). They were selected by the project’s curator, Jean Sousa.
Plenty of input
All this could have been just another jumble, a bunch of unrelated pieces thrown in a room with some bells and whistles to make it “kid-friendly.” But that’s not what happens here. Credit for the product goes partly to the process that shaped it–the 66-year-old Tigerman, once the enfant terrible of Chicago architecture, was advised by 12 enfants (i.e.,: 12 children ages 7 to 12) called The Art Team. They had 30 meetings over 9 months, and they ate a lot of cookies and drank a lot of milk. Tigerman gained a few pounds, but he also gained insight.
The kids wanted the show to be different from the rest of the museum–more fun, more interactive, more at their level. So the works of art are literally where a child’s eye can best see them, an inviting 40 inches high instead of the standard 50 inches better-suited to adults. In Tigerman’s case, of course, cooperation only goes so far; he is equal parts charm and arrogance. Truth be told, he co-opted the kid’s desire for high-tech wizardry, like virtual reality games, with a hands-on activity area that includes the puppet show and touch screen computers. That, of course, gave him room to play–and play he did, creating a setting for the art that is full of subtle lessons about the art of architecture.
There’s nothing subtle, however, about what the viewer sees upon entering the Kraft Education Center: An oval wall plastered with brightly colored images from India. It’s not a computer game, but its colors are electric and magical, and it draws you into the space because you only can enter at the far end of the oval, which contains the bronze of Vishnu. The wall has cutouts, which reveal the bronze and allow the viewer to look all the way to the back of the rectangular space. So, from the first, the entire exhibit displays itself: Four works of art in room-like niches that occupy each of the four corners, the temple-like oval and a chapel-like room housing Saint George Killing the Dragon on a central axis. The lighting is deliberately theatrical–the rooms housing the artworks are bright, the corridors between them are dark. It’s a different way of exciting kids than Tickle Me Elmo.
For much of his career, Tigerman has been preoccupied with the idea of architecture as a text, and that near-obsession continues here–a semi-circular table top, just to the right of the entrance, has six wood shapes that look like open books. Fortunately, there’s no mystery about what they mean. The wall text addresses young viewers directly: “What is a story? Why do we tell stories? How does a work of art tell a story? What is your story?”
As you move around the oval pathway, the answers become clear. Kids may not always get the relationship between the art and the architecture, but good curators and parents will point it out–or they will just let the architecture act on the participants, which is what the best buildings always do.
Good planning
Almost all the room-like spaces bring out the meaning of the art. And unlike a theme park, they evoke rather than attempt to literally reproduce settings. For example, the niche housing Walter Ellison’s 1936 painting, “Train Station,” a commentary on the separate but unequal public facilities created by the South’s “Jim Crow” laws, is about physical and moral duality. Two trompe-l’oeil paintings of train tracks run parallel on the floor and walls, where the tracks disappear in the distance. Two rows of curved wood pieces suggest the ceiling vaults of a train station. A child who loves trains is invited to run on the tracks, something forbidden at the real train station. And then, if he is old enough to understand, his parents can explain what the tracks really mean.
What makes the show a visual feast is the way Tigerman has shaped a variety of spaces, light treatments, even ceilings–from a lean-to of simple white beams for the Rip Van Winkle room (not particularly memorable) to an open-to-the-sky top festooned with bands of brightly colored chrysanthemums and roses for the temple-like space housing the statue of Vishnu (absolutely wonderful). The layers of space suggest layers of knowledge. Throughout, there are delightful details, like the heraldic symbols on crosses in the St. George chapel. But beneath the magic, there’s a method, and it’s called artful planning.
The exhibit is well-paced, with the hands-on area and a tiered sitting area for story-telling breaking up the serious study areas of the niches. And the arrangement of these room-like spaces is anything but random. You experience the violent story of St. George the knight slaying the dragon and–pow!–you turn around and there’s the seemingly peaceful statue of Vishnu in the distance. East meets West, Hinduism meets Christianity. And in both cases, good battles evil, though in different ways.
Walk into the temple-like space housing the Hindu deity, and you learn that when evil tries to overcome good on Earth, Vishnu descends from heaven in the guise of 10 avatars who battle the bad guys. Press a button, and a child’s voice (not some golden-throated adult narrator) tells these stories of Vishnu’s transformation. That’s what “Telling Images: Stores in Art,” ultimately is about: The profound power of art to transform our view of ourselves and our world. It’s a blast, but it’s more than kid stuff.
