Eye Spy, which required more than three years of research and planning, ambitiously spans 4,000 square feet at the Museum. Activities accompany 50 important works of art from the Museum's collection. There are four thematic areas: Museum Magic and Mysteries, a behind-the-scenes look at how museums are operated; A Touch of Dutch, focusing on 17th century Dutch painting and science; Elijah's Enchanted Wood, featuring the wood carvings of a noted Columbus artist; and Treasures of Ancient Mexico, exploring the art of ancient Mexico.




A group of fifteen elementary-school children from the Columbus area served as an advisory panel for the exhibition. The Art Team met regularly to offer and helped develop games, produced examples of studio projects, and acted as Eye Spy ambassadors. Team members were even tapped to recite fun facts about the Museum for touch-screen video kiosks. And the result? An exciting learning experience created with kids in mind and with kids as contributors.




The goal of Eye Spy, says exhibition coordinator Carole Genshaft in Columbus Monthly, is to show kids and their parents how art is essential to human existence, reflecting not just thought and ideas, but also history and culture. Art offers a complete sense of time and place that can be discovered and explored—thus the "adventure." "Art is a key to understanding the world. It isn't always just something on the wall—it is a part of life," she observes.



Eye Spy gives children active tools to interpret art: They can climb into a barber's chair and know the community that inspired Elijah Pierce's wood carvings, sit at a computer and see how they look in different styles of art, or study a 1,500-year-old object from the ancient Mexican culture of Teotihuacan. Children are encouraged to take what they learn in Eye Spy and apply it to the other galleries.

The exhibition meets the Museum's mission to be a community resource for education and family-oriented fun on a "grand scale," says Executive Director Irvin Lippman. "Eye Spy takes the talk about the importance of education out of rhetoric and makes it very real."


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