Found: A Museum Your Kids Will WANT to Visit
We would give would’ve given anything to play here right now as kids. Italian design firm Mathery Studio has created an interactive coloring exhibit at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria. The Pastello: Draw Act exhibit spans three rooms covered in huge sheets of paper, ready for creative genius in pint-size form to strike. Rather than setting out the trusty 96-count box (complete with our favorite Crayola color — cerulean, obviously), they’ve stocked the exhibit with the most unique crayons in the land, including some that the little ones can even use with their feet.
Inside the Pastello exhibit, children can draw with cutlery covered in crayon wax, huge spherical crayon balls and pendulums with crayons attached to the ends. There are also wearable crayons, like rollerblades made with crayon wheels or helmets with crayon nubbins. Some are stationary, where kids make the paper move instead of the crayon!
The Mathery duo behind Pastello, Erika Zorzi and Matteo Sangalli, came together in 2009 in Milan (you might remember them as the artists and inventors of ice cube jewelry ;). They soon started selling some of their housewares in the National Gallery of Victoria’s gift shop, and were contacted by the curator about this project to design a new space for kids in just five days. The Pastello exhibit that came out of that partnership is meant to be the opposite of “Please Do Not Touch,” a common theme of most museums.
“It’s all about the touch,” Zorzi says in an interview with Wired. “It grows people’s imaginations and it doesn’t give any restrictions. Sometimes, the path is more interesting than the result, we want them to live in the present and to not care about doing the perfect drawing but having fun during the act, during the process.”
It’s not about drawing within the lines — the art exhibit encourages free form creativity for all children, regardless of age or ability. It’s experimental and intuitive and kids get to be part of the exhibit and create their own art simply by playing. Check out some more of the coloring fun in this video!
Art teachers, parents, fellow crayon lovers: anyone feeling super inspired right about now?! Melbourne residents — show us your pics of the fun on Instagram! We’re at @britandco.
