Milwaukee Art Museum

We’ve been trying to do a better job of planning some fun excursions for our Saturdays so we don’t just stay at home and get on one another’s nerves. So when we were offered the chance to go check out the grand opening of the Kohl’s Art Generation exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum (for free!), we jumped at the chance.

It’s a gorgeous museum with incredible architecture, and situated right on Lake Michigan. I can’t believe we hadn’t ever been there before!

Since it was the grand opening they had a few special things for the kids, like their own VIP passes and a scavenger hunt list.

We walked around a little at first and checked out some of the real art. Pretty cool stuff. My favorite was a chalkboard with some chalk scribbles on it. Avery thought she could have done a better job. :)

So there were three parts to the Kohls Art Generation. First we checked out the Studio, which is only open during certain times for projects (the rest of the rooms are open whenever the museum is). The girls had fun painting and also crafting some cool birds with feathers and such.

Lily and I hung out together while Merrick did most of the work with the girls.

Then we checked out the Gallery which was really interesting. They had all these Disney pictures and then they showed some of the behind the scenes – a picture of the real castle that inspired Cinderella’s, some stained glass that inspired parts of Beauty and the Beast, etc. Very cool.

In the Gallery they also had lots of projects you could do. Avery worked on a frame-by-frame movie drawing. And Merrick made a cool animation flip book. I helped Camryn draw various scenes from Finding Nemo. We spent over an hour in this room alone.

The last room was the Lab where the kids learned about different jobs people who work in a Museum do. They learned about Curators, Designers, Framers, etc. It was all hands on and interactive, very fun.

Anyways it was a great day. And the girls finished their scavenger hunts and got some prizes – pencil cases with pencils, notebooks, and sharpeners for each of them. We took our time and spent about 3 1/2 hours there. So glad we went – especially with these girls of mine that love, love, love to craft and color. It was perfect for them. I highly recommend checking it out!