National Gallery of Art
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4 Reviews for National Gallery of Art
108
46
'10, '11
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"Know your kids"
I am going to give you one simple tip for getting through this museum with kids: THE FREE AUDIO TOUR. The kids version of the audio tour is free of charge and kept the kids engaged. It comes with a brochure telling us what galleries had stops. This allowed us to explore the museum, take in some amazing works of art, and the kids were content.
My 10 year old is learning about Da Vinci in school this year and so the highlight of the museum was being able to see Da Vinci paintings up close and personal.
Now, all that being said, you have to know your kids. My kids are 10, 9 and 7, getting old enough to take a museum like this in. If they are still young enough where you can't keep them still or their hands to themselves you may want to skip this stop. Even with the older ones you may want to remind them that the art if for looking at with their eyes and not touching with their hands. We had a close call ourselves! We also only did one building, the West Building. I don't think we had it in us as a family to go through the other building too.
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1 family found this helpful
"Leave the kids at home."
This would have probably been more fun had I left the kids at home during my visit. My children are too young to appreciate the art and are still learning the concept of keeping their hands to themselves. Like another reviewer said, the rooms seem almost empty yet there is a lot of stuff on the ground and reachable by little hands. I felt like I spent the whole time telling my kids to keep their hands to themselves and we were out of there as quick as we could find the exit.
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"Kinda Boring"
We went through the National Gallery of Art and on the "New Art" side it was very EMPTY looking and just super boring. We did however enjoy the cool lights between the new art and historical art buildings. And the wall of water was very cool. The old art gallery was very interesting and facinating to be around SO much history of art at one time, but then again if your don't know much about art, it's not that interesting for you. I may have recognized a couple things but other than that it's navigating through GIGANTIC seemingly empty rooms and trying not to get lost. We roamed around but nothing caught our eye of interest. If you miss this one, you didn't miss much!
1 family found this helpful
"Check out the Concourse between buildings"
I loved this museum, but it's not very interesting for small children. Take them next door to the Natural History Museum for lots for fun. However, if you're keen on seeing any of the incredible works that are housed here with little ones in tow, take the underground concourse between the West Building (which houses the only Da Vinci in the US) and the modern East Building (with a huge suspended Calder). Along the concourse, you'll find a better cafe than the Natural History Museum (assuming you'd prefer something other than hot dogs and fried foods) and a museum store with an entire childrens' section. But most kids will enjoy the wonderfully lit tunnel and the waterfall sculpture against the glass wall. It's a short diversion in what is otherwise a very grown up, hands off sort of place. There does seem to be some programs for older children, starting around 6 I believe, but it wasn't the right age group for us.
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