Hi,

Which would be your top pick for an art gallery for children age 10 and 11? Preferably one with a mix of eras from early to contemporary. Free entry as well.

National gallery doesn't have contemporary. The Tate has split the modern art out to separate gallery. Anyone got any suggestions?

Thanks!

http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/about_us/index.html

thanks, I know the V&A is a great museum for kids, but they want to go to an art gallery this time, cheers though.

I'll try harder...

Courtauld Gallery

Or the Wallace Collection

BTW Wallace Collection has a very nice lunch in the garden room

http://www.wallacecollection.org/

Wallace, that was the one I was thinking of!

I was also thinking of John Soane's, for something different.

Well done: you've managed to find an unsolvable brief. There's hardly a free art gallery with traditional and modern art in London.


The National Portrait Gallery DOES have paintings from the 14th to the 21st century: that's its whole point. If the children have a bent for history (or modern life) the storyline might well keep their attention longer than most. galleries. Or it might be so much not what they want, it turns them off. Tate Britain DOES have earlyish British stuff , as well as cutting-edge contemporary - but it doesn't start till 1500, and you might think its focus on British art is a bit restricting.

The Wallace Collection expressly DOESN'T: it's essentially a 19th century collection, and there's scarcely anything been added for yonks, or from later than about 1850. The Courtauld fails as being neither free nor interested in anything afer about 1900.

You could try one of the major provincial art galleries - like the Walker in Liverpool - but I suspect that's off brief too.

Incidentally, the curent Rude Britannia show at Tate Britain covers mildly filthy art (well not really filthy: Donald McGill and Hogarth sort of stuff) from about 1600 to date.

It would have been RIGHT up my street when I was 10.

If you were in Glasgow then Kelvingrove would do it....free (as most museums and galleries here)and has a real mixture of things, some Art a Spitfire (WW2 plane) hung from the ceiling and a whole bunch of interactive children's stuff

I've seen kids in the National Portrait Gallery and they seemed to love it.

Thanks for the suggestions, we decided on The Tate for yesterday. Had a nice little walk round Big Ben/Houses of Parliament area first then along the river to the Tate. There was enough variety there to keep their interest for an hour or so, but that was about it. The Tate had a summer holiday 'art trolley' where kids can help themselves to drawing/modelling stuff so they then spent a happy 30 minutes building paper models of the Fiona Banner piece - 2 real war planes (one hanging point down from the ceiling, 1 upside down on the floor, don't ask me, i don't 'get' this sort of stuff).

I don't think it was quite what they were expecting but I did my best to get them to think and talk about what they were seeing.

I think they enjoyed going on the tube for the first time most of all