If you bring children to the Milwaukee Art Museum, it’s hard to avoid seeing Standing Woman, a nude bronze more than seven feet high just inside the entrance. At the John Michael Kohler Art Center, if you escort a girl into the atrium restroom, there are ceramic tiles on the wall that include nude female torsos. Even if you go to the Boerner Botanical Flower Garden, there are multiple nude statues. While savoring all the wonderful art in Wisconsin, here are some ideas for approaching nudity in art with children.
Let children lead the way. Cate Bayles, education program coordinator at the John Michael Kohler Art Center says, “You hand the authority to the child.” You wait for the child to speak.
If a child initiates a discussion, Bayles suggests using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) vtshome.org. VTS encourages responding with open-ended questions. If a child says, “Oh, they don’t have clothes on,” you could ask, “Oh, they don’t?” and see what the child says next. If a child giggles, Bayles asks, “What do you see right now?” Paul R. Baker Prindle, director of university galleries at the University of Nevada notes, “Young children are usually most interested in what the figures are doing.”
William Zuback, a Milwaukee photographer with three children says, “It becomes a teachable moment, like so many things in life are.” You could introduce what Brigid Globensky, senior director of education and programs at the Milwaukee Art Museum, considers a key concept: “Artists are interested in depicting the human body nude because flesh is universal. Dressing the body makes the work specific to a time and place and it is no longer timeless.” Graeme Reid, director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, tells children, “It’s much harder to draw, paint or sculpt a naked body than a clothed one.” With older children, this could lead into a conversation about volume and light, concepts of masculine and feminine, or the expressive aspects of the figure and the feelings it evokes.
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Since we all have bodies, there is a power in that self-recognition. Zuback is “amazed at the maturity children can possess at a young age.”
