Bianca Bigley, 1, left, play with her sister Josienna Bigley, 3, at an artwork called “Slumber Underground: Interspecies Burrow” in the show “Inside Art” at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, on Feb. 13, 2020.(Photo/BaidiWang)
The Children’s Museum of Manhattan has hosted an exhibition since last month. The “Inside Art” exhibition features the work of eleven contemporary artists, and it aims to help audiences connect with art, space, and design in a whole new way.
That installation, Julie Ann Nagle’s “Slumber Underground: Interspecies Burrow,” is one of the artworks among the show. According to her introduction of the artwork, she hopes people will explore through their senese from her sculptures and installations, and also to learn from exploring her art the way she learned while making it.
By crawling under “Slumber Underground: Interspecies Burrow”, children are able to be immersed in the “natural environment” created by the artwork easily because they will move like a groundhog as they dwell in one of two burrows built to human scale. As Nagle said, children will find felt sculptures of bacteria to play with and appreciate their positive contributions to our ecosystem.
Leslie Bushara, the museum’s deputy director of education and exhibitions, talked about the special exhibition: “The show lets visitors encounter art not as a child sort of pretending to be an adult, but running around like a child.”