Bouncing into the weekend
Ever fancied jumping around in a room filled with rubber balls? Does the thought of making scary creatures out of colourful clay and then filming them for your own TV show make you scream with excitement? And how would you like to be let loose in a mini-music studio, with your own personal sound engineer?
Oh to be a kid again, and especially one in Manhattan. For this autumn, the Children’s Museum of the Arts has re-opened in fabulous new premises near SoHo. Like so much in New York, it is bigger and better than what might pass for its equivalent in Europe. Bags of money and bucketloads of imagination are what make this city great, and both are in evidence at the shiny new CMA.
Park your stroller in the gleaming lobby, pick up a map and you’re off. For years, the Children’s Museum was tucked away in a tatty townhouse on Lafayette Street. Charming, certainly, but more artist’s atelier than kid-friendly playground.
Today there is a glorious, light-filled art studio, replete with paints, easels, crayons, collage material and even a fancy stainless steel fountain in which to wash everything off afterwards. You can join any of the rotating workshops—come on a quiet day and you’ll get what amounts to one-to-one tuition from one of the talented in-house artists, all of whom pursue professional careers outside the museum.
Younger kids will have to be forklifted out of the bouncy ball and slide area, which is painted in dizzying primal shades (bring your camera; the walls provide a stunning backdrop for family snaps). Although everything still feels new, the hippyish aura that made the old museum special is still in evidence. On our visit, bearded staff members banged drums and tamborines in a pleasantly shambolic musical improvisation workshop.
Even the computer-fixated will find succour here, only this time they can put their thumb reflexes to creative use, in an animation studio that would not look out of place at Pixar. Our son disappeared into the bright magenta sound room, where he put together an impressively discordant wall of noise with the patient guidance of another (bearded) member of staff.
It is all very good value for $10, though sadly, there is no sign of a café for frazzled parents to disappear into. The only room boasting refreshments on our visit was cordoned off, filled with fiercely fashionable parents celebrating a toddler birthday.
But perhaps it is a wise move on the part of the museum. Offer cappuccino and cushions, and every mum and dad in sight would disappear behind their rarely-read copies of the New York Times or happily stare into space for an hour, while their urchins slipped the leash. And in those circumstances, who would blame all those lovely assistants for dumping the day job, and heading straight for the exit?
Children’s Museum of the Arts, 103 Charlton St (at Hudson). Tel: 212 274 0986. Weekends, 10am-6pm. Week times vary.
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