HOW TO GO:
What: The Lange Family Experiencenter at the Dayton Art Institute. The current exhibit, "The Nature of Art," will run through April 2017
Where: 456 Belmonte Park North, Dayton
When: Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Extended hours until 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays
Admission: General admission to the permanent collection which includes the Experiencenter is $8 for adults; $5 for seniors, active military and groups; free for college students 18 and up with ID; free for youth and children 17 and under. Members are free.
Special programs: Tiny Thursdays are drop-in family programs held from 11 a.m. to noon every Thursday for children ages 2-5. Tickets are $6 per child for members; $8 per child for non-members. Super Saturday Family Days are held the second and fourth Saturday of every month, unless otherwise noted. The next programs are slated for Saturday, Aug. 27, and Saturday, Sept. 10. Tickets are $10 for a family of four (members); $15 for a family of four for non-members. There is a $2 charge for each additional child.
For more information: www.daytonartinstitute.org or call (937) 223-4ART (4278).
Did you know that the Dayton Art Institute was one of the first art museums in the country to introduce a gallery specifically devoted to interactive art activities for youngsters? The Experiencenter, marking its 40th anniversary this year, has served as a model for other art museums over the years.
The popular gathering spot has been educating and entertaining families since Saturday, Nov. 20, 1976. Many adults who have fond memories of visiting the special space as kids are now bringing their own children.
“The Experiencenter is based on the concept that people — of all ages — learn to understand the creative process by being actively involved,” wrote Journal Herald arts critic Walt McCaslin on the Center’s opening day. In that first exhibit, entitled “Shape Show,” McCaslin wrote that the various activities and art works allowed visitors to discover for themselves how artists, architects and designers are inspired by forms observed in daily life.
Over the years, young visitors have been introduced to a wide variety of engaging artistic experiences — from weaving and printmaking to paper-making. In 1979, for exmaple, The Japanese House invited children to enter a replica of a tatami room and learn to sit in the traditional way, while focusing on a calligraphic scroll hanging in the tokanoma (alcove). They practiced breathing in the manner of the Zen artist who made the scroll, and, on the 10th breath, used a Japanese brush to paint a simple circle on rice paper with water.
How it began
The roots of the Experiencenter — and its founder and first project director — can be traced back to Dayton’s Living Arts Center, the federally funded cultural enrichment program that targeted inner city public school students. Thanks to funding from the Junior League of Dayton, artist/educator Pamela P. Houk had been selected to develop a participatory exhibit space known as the Living Arts Center Gallery.
Houk says the concept for that gallery was based on the theory that young people are more likely to understand complex concepts through direct problem-solving rather than direct learning. One of the important goals, she says, was to help visitors look at art with new insights, deeper understanding, and a desire to learn more about artists, their media, and the artists’ concepts.
Around the same time, the non-profit Junior League and its corps of dedicated volunteers had been wanting to start a children’s museum in Dayton and voted to fund the renovation of the vacated building that had housed the School of the Dayton Art Institute. The old student lounge and snack bar became the museum’s first Experiencenter and Houk became its first director. Over the years — from 1976 through 2000 — she dreamed up 39 different participatory exhibits ranging from “Puppetry of China” and “Art That Flies” to “A History of 3-D Art in Popular Culture” and “Color Connections.”
Under Houk’s leadership visitors learned to do everything from sit in a Japanese manner in a Japanese room and make a textile on a loom to make paper and work with a print-maker to make etchings on a real etching press. In 1993, she received an Ohio Governor’s Award for outstanding work in art education.
Finding a home
In 1993 the Experiencenter gallery relocated to the museum building in the old library space off what was then known as the Asian Wing. In 1996-97 when the DAI closed for the museum renovation, the Experiencenter moved to its present location.
Art teacher Arlene Branick became the official “Educator for the Experiencenter” in 2003. From that time until 2012 when she retired, Branick curated all the exhibitions in the space.
“Arlene did a fantastic job following in Pam’s footsteps and expanding on what Pam established,” says Susan Anable, the DAI’s former director of education. “Her first exhibit was fabulous. It was called ‘Eyes on Architecture’ and it focused on architectural structures from around the world using objects in the museum’s collection.” Other exhibits in those years ranged from “Kids as Curators” to “Sitting Pretty.”
“We always used works from our permanent collection in the gallery in order for children to experience the actual art,” notes Branick. “A photograph is just not the same.”
Today’s Lange Family Experiencenter
The mission hasn’t really changed over the years but the name has. Thanks to generous sponsorship, the gallery was renamed the Lange Family Experiencenter in 2015.
“The goal has always been to an intergenerational space for people to experience in art in an interactive way with hands-on activities,” says Susan Martis, the DAI’s director of education who is now responsible for coming up with Experiencenter themes.
At the moment it’s “The Nature of Art” which will run through next April. Martis says it complements the year’s overall theme: “Year of the Elements,” the series of three shows that focus on the classic elements — fire, air, earth, water and ether.
“Nature was a natural for the Experiencenter because so much of art relates to nature — either because it represents nature or it is made of natural materials,” Martis explains. Works of art in the new show demonstrate how artists use natural materials. This first installation — now on display — includes wood, ceramics and works on paper and is inspired by some of Houk’s past exhibitions.
In the installation entitled “Agaricales Illuminated” by Virginia Kistler, you can walk inside the tall mushroom sculptures and peek under their caps to see the beautiful designs. Young visitors can read books about nature, decorate leaves to put on a tree, stack nesting boxes to build a tree. The mystery texture tubes are always fun: without looking, you’ll place your hand inside each cube and feel different textures. For an additional challenge, you can draw how that texture feels or draw an object that you think would be made out of that texture.
Older children can enlarge the patterns of nature by tracing a pattern onto a sheet of acetate, then putting it into a projector to see it enlarged. They can also create an embossed design. They can use props to recreate what they might hear when visiting the sites in the photos on display: They can shift the sand, turn a rain stick, crunch the snow, and twist the tab on the bird call.
Be sure and pick up a Family Guide to the Permanent Collection which will aid you in finding artwork throughout the museum made from materials found in nature. The Guide also includes fun nature-related art activities you can do at home.
Family classes
The Experiencenter and its adjacent classroom is frequently used for family workshops and activities. On Thursday mornings, for example, the Experiencenter is filled with parents and grandparents and caregivers and kids. “There are so many different activities the children can do on their own,” says grandma Jenny Fiden, who regularly attends the Tiny Thursday workshops with her grandchildren.
Mimi Brewer of Kettering agrees. “This is a wonderful program” she says. “My 3-year-old granddaughter knows what a painting is, and talks about jewels in paintings.”
Jelly bean favorite
It was a great idea to install artist Sandy Skoglund’s mesmerizing jellybean creation in the Experiencenter permanently; everyone loves it! The installation consists of two jellybean-covered mannequins assembled in dance-like poses on a jellybean-covered floor. Fluttering hand-painted butterflies cover the surrounding walls.
In her artist’s statement Skoglund has said that she likes working with food because it’s a familiar material. “The value of art, the educational value of art, the sort of life affirming value of art has to do with bringing our awareness of the everyday miracle that’s around us, that everything is, in its own way, if you look at it, quite strange and quite marvelous,” she says. “For me, food is an icon of familiarity, which is so natural to us on a daily basis that it’s almost invisible.”
Going strong
Houk says she is grateful that after 40 years the Experiencenter is still going strong. “Fortunately, the DAI has had a succession of directors and education department professionals who have continued to support the idea,” she says. “Subsequent heads of the education department such as Susan Anable and Susan Martis, have taken the program into the digital age through work with university and high school students, and activities on the DAI website.”
But the original idea remains the same. “The focus is to provide an engaging learning environment in a gallery setting in which visitors of all ages can immerse themselves in activities that promote deeper understanding of the art on view,” Houk says.
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