Children’s artwork makes big impression at the Guggenheim
Saturday, May 17th 2008, 4:00 AM
Anyone who’s ever been to an art museum and thought, “My kid could do that,” will appreciate the new show at the Guggenheim Museum.
Take this installation: photographs of frozen and melting milk meant to symbolize the westward movement of European settlers into Native American lands.
The brainchild of some edgy East Village artiste?
Nope. It’s the work of a fifth-grade class at Public School 9 in Brooklyn, participants in the Guggenheim’s annual “A Year With Children” exhibit.
Not exactly Crayola stick figures, is it?
The creativity and intellectual thought displayed by the budding art-world stars even impressed Roland Augustine, who owns a gallery in Chelsea.
Augustine, head of the Luhring Augustine Gallery and president of the Art Dealers Association of America, said he was impressed by the “celebratory” range of colors and media in the exhibit, which runs through June 13.
“The beauty of children’s art is that it’s unedited – it’s direct,” he said. “And it’s so empowering for the students.”
A fifth-grader’s collage of a heron in a pond with a broken mask at the bottom of the water was deemed “amazing” by Augustine.
“It’s so poignant and introspective – the mask is bifurcated as if to show what’s being imagined. It has a deep sense of pathos,” he said.