His arts education begins 6 feet above the floor. A pair of tiny feet dangle from the bottom of a backpack. His hands reach out and tickle my ears. I promised myself that I would never become one of those parents who shoves culture down his child's throat. Now, on the eve of my second Father's Day, I've come to realize that there is a gray area between being forceful and being supportive of new experiences. More importantly, I've witnessed first-hand the exhilarating impact art can make on a child's wide-open eyes.
Conflicting work schedules forced my 23-month-old son, Theo, to make his first gallery visit on a recent Saturday afternoon. I had promised local artist and Art Academy of Cincinnati instructor Keith Benjamin that I would come see his work at the Warsaw Project, his East Price Hill gallery space. My wife had to work. Benjamin was removing his art that evening to make room for the next gallery show. So I gave Benjamin fair warning that I'd come to the gallery with Theo in tow.
A quick visit slowly grew into a 90-minute stay. We walked along the gallery's long, narrow room, while Benjamin talked about his installations. We looked at slide projections of previous work. The afternoon became a complete family affair. Benjamin's young son and daughter kept busy drawing in the corner of the gallery.
Like most people, I've fallen into the trap of thinking of galleries as hip gathering spots for opening-night parties. Drinks are served. People mingle. A band plays in the corner. It's a regular adult playground. But on this particular Saturday afternoon, one gallery become an impromptu classroom for an attentive preschooler. The experience helped open my eyes to a larger arts reality.
The backpack made a second cultural visit the following day. An early afternoon tour of the Ansel Adams exhibit was organized by curatorial staff at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Some valuable lessons were learned that day at the Ansel Adams exhibit. Theo doesn't like crowded elevators. In fact, he doesn't like crowds. So standing at the edge of the tour group became my only option.
The installation's soft lighting and subdued colors had a lulling impact. Midway through the exhibit, somewhere around Adams' photograph of the Sunset District of San Francisco, Theo fell asleep. With his head jutting at a 45-degree angle, maneuvering through the packed galleries became difficult. It was soon clear that one little boy can take only so much cultural excitement before nap time.
Much of Cincinnati's cultural community is evaluated with a mature perspective. We demand progressive programming from our local arts organizations. We applaud local artists who challenge us with avant-garde work. Capital campaigns rise and fall on the efforts of business leaders and long-time philanthropists. Performance groups build their next generation of patrons with young professional parties and brewpub mixers. It makes for sensible marketing. But it takes time spent with a child to remind us that an arts foundation can begin a lot earlier.
I've visited ArtWorks and the Taft Museum's Artists Reaching Classrooms exhibit through the years. I've seen Cincinnati Public School art teachers struggle to build a curriculum with limited resources. Groups like Madcap Puppet Theatre, Children's Theatre and, most importantly, the Association for the Advancement of Arts Education make youth outreach the core component of their mission. In most cases, when I wrote about educational programming, the spotlight was placed on the various administrators and the organizations themselves. It took a little boy in a backpack, my own son, to remind me that the arts can be something that's free of debate, controversy and politics. The arts can be as innocent as child's play. It's a discovery I wish I had made sooner.
