Last week I played host to one of my favorite house guests, my six-year-old nephew. Quite the swinging little bachelor when he comes to visit his aunt in the Big Apple, my nephew is always game for that particular visit's adventure, patiently and enthusiastically looking forward to whom we might meet and whatever fun we might share (beyond the endless built-in thrill provided by the stairwell of a 5th floor walk-up apartment.)
Over the past three years we've taken in The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Children's Museum, The Bronx Zoo, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and more. This particular visit we enjoyed a great day at the Guggenheim Museum, where he marveled at the "Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video Performance" and "Julie Mehretu: Grey Area" exhibits, appreciating the sheer awesomeness of being able to take in the art both near and far, as we climbed our way to the top and stopped at every level so he could look back at the downward spirals to remark on art one, two, and three levels down.
After this success and on the advice of a friend, I decided we would take in The Frick Collection the following day.
As we entered The Frick, we were greeted by two security guards who shuffled their feet into a ring around the rosy, trapping our progression to the admissions counter.
"How old is he?" they inquired repeatedly and in rapid succession, referring to my companion.
Not fazed by this question, as I've been asked it before, I smiled and answered, "six."
"I'm sorry, miss, but no children under the age of 10 are allowed into the museum," the taller of the two guards informed me authoritatively.
A bit taken aback, I said, "Oh, he's been to lots of museums and knows the appropriate behavior," and attempted, once again, to turn right toward admissions.
"No, sorry, only children under two or over 10," the guard stressed, miming holding a child in his arms and maneuvering his ring around the rosy into a "Mother, May I?" game that forced me into a Robert E. Lee retreat from Gettysburg.
My nephew looked up at me quizzically, but didn't interrupt our exchange.
"I wasn't aware of this policy," I explained.
"It's on the website, miss."
"Well," I said, quelling every temptation I had to unleash an arsenal of my inner New York attitude I keep firmly in check when the moment calls for it. "We'll just take our patronage elsewhere," I said and turned on my heel.
And with that my nephew and I marched 12 blocks uptown to The Met, where we spent several happy hours, and, following scrutinization of a Mark Rothko, he confessed, "They could at least move the policy down to nine. Nine is old!"
My bad for not reading the specifics of the website more carefully. It turns out The Frick Collection does not admit children under the age of 10 (though it says nothing about admitting those under the age of two) and its young educational outreach programs are geared only to middle school and high school students and older.
This policy dates back to the founding of the Collection which opened to the public in 1935. It is a policy established by the Trustees and is deemed necessary to fulfill the intention of the Collection's founder, Henry Clay Frick, to preserve and display his celebrated works of art in their domestic setting.
...The rooms of the Frick Collection, which one may walk through at leisure, contain works of art that are more rare, fine, and valuable than those of nearly any "period room" to be found in another museum. As you can imagine, leaving the works of art exposed as they are at The Frick Collection, and as they would be found in a house, places them significantly at greater risk.
The admission of young children to The Frick Collection would necessitate erecting numerous and varied physical barrier to protect the works of art. That action would fundamentally change the experience of viewing the Collection. Not only would children thereby fail to experience these works of art in their historic setting of 1914--the basic premise of The Frick Collection--but this experience would be lost to all adults as well.
In 1995, pursuant to a change in the Administrative Code of the City of New York, The Frick Collection applied to and received from the New York City Commission on Human Rights an exemption from the age discrimination provisions of Section 8-107(4)(a)....
In the words of English architect Charles Fowler, "The arts provide a more comprehensive and insightful education because they invite students to explore the emotional, intuitive, and irrational aspects of life that science is hard pressed to explain...The arts humanize the curriculum while affirming the interconnectedness of all forms of knowing. They are a powerful means to improve general education." Too bad The Frick severly limits for whom this theory should be put into practice.
Get with it, The Frick Collection. Since 1914 women got the right to vote (in 1919) and since the Collection opened to the public in 1935, the federal regulations of child labor were achieved through the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). Might I also mention that the black man got the right to vote (the 1965 Voting Rights Act that corrected the loopholes of the 15th amendment), and oh, yes, we elected a black man as President of the United States of America (2008).
It's time the New York City Commission on Human Rights and The Frick Collection jump on the 21st century bandwagon of progressive thinking, take a little risk (familiar with "nothing ventured, nothing gained"?), and expose The Frick Collection to young children (who pose just as great of a risk as adult museum-goers).
After all, a lot of those artists whose work The Frick displays, weren't they taking a risk in baring their artistic souls (through their work) for all the world to view and judge? Or do The Frick Collection and the New York City Commission on Human Rights advocate a guarded world with irrational boundaries? In the words of Pablo Picasso, ""You know, music, art--these are not just little decorations to make life prettier. They're very deep necessities which people cannot live without." Who in this world needs art more than young children?
I spent four years of high school working as a weekend and summer tour guide for the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I dealt with many a senior citizen, adult, child, family, foreigner (you name it, we had it) traipsing through the home and coming into close contact with many fine arts - fine china and breakable figurines and lamps, glass vases, beds, desks, drawers, chairs -- all of them within breathing distance. I never once had a problem. I was a spectacled teenager with braces and not an imposing middle-aged guard; and yet, people still listened to the rules--in fact, more often than not, I didn't have to utter a word.
And how funny that The Frick Collection encourages adults attending private events in their reception hall or garden court to wander the collection at their leisure: "The Frick Collection evokes the glamour of Gilded Age New York and provides a uniquely elegant setting for any reception, cocktail party, or dinner. In various configurations, the Frick can accommodate up to 350 people for a cocktail reception and 200 for a seated dinner. All events happen after hours from 7:00 p.m. to midnight, giving guests the opportunity to experience the Frick's preeminent art collection in an unhurried way, as Mr. Frick might have."
Seems to me, Mr. Frick, that an intoxicated adult who has had too much to drink at his colleague's daughter's wedding and wants to take in your collection poses a far greater risk to your collection than a naturally curious 6 year old. But then again, I guess that's just me.
Imagine if the Smithsonian, the Louvre, or Hermitage adopted this policy toward children. In fact, they do the opposite. The Louvre is free to "visitors under the age of 18," while the Hermitage broadcasts, "Love and appreciation for art is a characteristic that develops over time. Therefore, the State Hermitage is dedicated to fostering the artistic spirit in children of all ages." I've been there. You can stand so close to Henri Matisse's "The Red Room" you could plant a kiss on it. But you know what? No one does.
"Art for art's sake?" asked British author E.M. Forster. "I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden...it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity."
Places like Peterhof (St. Petersburg, Russia) and Versailles allow visitors of all ages to get up close and personal with the art, and do not force them to crane their necks to peer down a tunnel of a roped off area, so somehow, they manage. Surely The Frick Collection could, too.
How The Frick Collection perpetuates such antiquated thinking to keep in step with the stereotype of the "stuffy" Upper East Side neighborhood it resides in is simply embarrassing in this day and age, and sends the wrong message to our children, who, in a world where funding for the arts and entire art programs has been slashed or permanently killed, need exposure at a young age to the very big world of art so much larger than their own. How else to better stimulate the creative minds of tomorrow who will be left behind to solve the myriad of problems our planet faces?
In the words of American social theorist Howard S. Becker:
All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number, of people. Through their cooperation, the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be. The work always shows signs of that cooperation. The forms of cooperation may be ephemeral, but often become more or less routine, producing patterns of collective activity we can call an art world.
... Art worlds do not have boundaries around them, so that we can say that these people belong to a particular art world while those people do not. I am not concerned with drawing a line separating an art world from other parts of a society. Instead, we look for groups of people who cooperate to produce things that they, at least, call art; having found them, we look for other people who are also necessary for that production, gradually building up as complete a picture as we can of the entire cooperating network that radiates out from the work in question.
The world exists in the cooperative activity of those people, not as a structure or organization, and we use words like those only as shorthand for the notion of networks of people cooperating.
Waiting until the age of 10 to instill these important lessons is a serious case of too little, too late. Ask the 10-year-old child who has grown up fatherless or the 10 year old child who has been abused. An appreciation for love, kindness, respect, art - all of these things start early.
My younger, three-year-old nephew is next due for his visit to Aunt Ashley. Since he's not two anymore, I guess I won't be taking him to The Frick Collection, either. I think we're going to take in The National Museum of the American Indian. They admit children of all ages. I learned my lesson - I've already checked the website. Twice.