THE GREAT ART ADVENTURE

The adventure begins before the first class. The week before each session, every child receives a four-page newsletter in the mail—addressed to them, at their home—introducing that week’s artist. It includes their biography, photographs of their work and activities that the kids can do before they ever walk into the Kids Zone. For many of our children, that envelope arriving with their name on it is its own small gift.

Then they come to class and make the work themselves. The Great Art Adventure is a six-week immersion in art history through the eyes of the artists themselves—all scaled for kids 6-12 to enjoy. Each week a different master takes the stage. Children study their lives and work, look closely at what makes their styles distinctive and then create their own original piece in that artist’s tradition.

Past artists have included Frank Bowling—the Guyanese-British abstract painter whose sweeping color fields transformed canvas into landscape. Anne Alberts—the Bauhaus weaver who proved that fiber was as serious as paint. Hilma af Klint—the Swedish visionary who painted abstraction before abstraction had a name. Jacob Lawrence—whose bold flat forms and powerful color told the story of the African American experience. Amadeo Modigliani—whose elongated portraits and beauty to the overlooked. And Wayne Thiebaud—the American painter who found luminous beauty in cakes, pies and the ordinary objects of everyday life and taught children that what surrounds us is worth looking at carefully.

This is serious art history. Taught to children between six and twelve. In a gallery classroom in Lexington, Kentucky.