New exhibit puts kids into play at Carnegie Museum

By Cristina Rouvalis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

	Martha Rial photos, Post-Gazette Amelia Samandari, 9, of Mt. Lebanon reads "Where the Wild Things Are" while visiting the "kid size: The Material World of Childhood" exhibit at Carnegie Museum of Art, Oakland. Click photo for larger image.

James Boston, 5, spins around on the gallery floor of the Carnegie Museum of Art in a shiny red shell-shaped toy.

His mother, Karen, 40, plops into one, too, hugging her knees for maximum twirl. "Do you feel like a turtle, James?" asks the Upper St. Clair mother, laughing.

This is sheer silliness more fitting for a playground than the hushed environs of an art museum, but none of the guards raise their eyebrows or flash them THE LOOK.

Being a kid -- or at least acting or thinking like one -- is the point of the Carnegie's new exhibition, "kid size: The Material World of Childhood," which runs through Sept. 11.

"I want people to remember the feeling of a summer day, and it's 8:30 at night and the sun hasn't set yet," says Elisabeth Agro, the curator who organized the Pittsburgh presentation. "Your only worry is hearing your mom yell, 'It's time for bed.' "

The traveling exhibition showcases more than 130 everyday objects designed for children over the past 300 years. Museum-goers can gawk at everything from a mint-condition 1969 plastic Big Wheel to a 1750s Louis XV child's armchair.

The collection reflects the changing attitudes of parents toward children -- from "little adults" who had to be tamed, to individuals with their own way of relating to the world with their own expensive gear.

Instead of white walls and muffled voices, it's brightly painted walls with geometric shapes and piped-in playground shouts, cricket chirps and the slamming of lockers. Anne Mundell, a drama professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and Dale McNutt of Soho Inventions Inc. designed the exhibition.

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