Art Adventures Inspires Future Designers

Sage Kincaid, assistant curator of education, works with a YWCO group on a gallery tour during Art Adventures.

Every Wednesday and Thursday this summer, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., children came to the Georgia Museum of Art to get inspired by the work of designer Giò Ponti on a 90-minute journey to Italy. They were participating in Art Adventures, the museum’s annual free summer program. Art Adventures runs every June and July, encouraging focused engagement with works of art and a studio art activity that builds on children’s experiences in the galleries. Day camps, day cares and community centers take advantage of it, bringing about 600 elementary-school-aged children to the museum in the summer months.

Art Adventures has a different theme every year. This summer, informed by the exhibition “Modern Living: Giò Ponti and the 20th-Century Aesthetics of Design,” it focused on modern design and how we use design in our everyday lives. Children took an interactive tour of the exhibition, led by museum education staff and interns. Examples of gallery activities included looking for elements of art in Ponti’s designs, imagining how furniture functions in different settings and thinking about their own style by listening to examples of Italian music while learning about the work.

Art Adventurers design and create their tiles.

After the tour, kids created their own works of art, using their new knowledge of art and design. Thinking about the patterns and colors they saw in the exhibition for inspiration, they tried out different colors and shapes. and practiced using new art materials. Once they felt ready, they created colorful patterns on a ceramic tile using tissue paper and a clear glaze. Students cut and tore tissue paper and layered it to explore patterns, transparency and colors on the tile. When they finished, they each had a beautiful tile with a unique design.

An Art Adventurer with her finished tile.

“I’m always so inspired by kids’ creativity and their imagination.” said Sage Kincaid, the museum’s assistant curator of education. “Our goal for this program is to engage children with the exhibition and help them feel connected and interested in not just the works of art and the museum, but also their own and classmates’ reactions and thoughts about what they are seeing.”

Jinsui Li
Intern, Department of Communications