Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Introducing children to medieval art

Inside a dark room in the Cloisters, 10 small children crowded around tapestries of men hunting unicorns. Their instructor, Britt Eilhardt, led them in a discussion of dogs, unicorns and why the Cloisters has a plant that is also in the Harry Potter books.

“The art we have here is really old,” she said, “and it’s really full of dog pictures!”

While looking at medieval art may sound like a decidedly grown-up activity, the Metropolitan Museum of Art disagrees. The Cloisters, the branch of the Met located in Fort Tryon Park, has a family program, in which they try to make medieval art accessible to children and bring more families to the uptown museum.

Click here to read this article from the Manhattan Times