Pretoria Art MuseumART APPRECIATION Before you plan a visit to the Pretoria Art Museum, read these articles about how to introduce your children to art: Art Appreciation the Charlotte Mason Way This gallery is not your conventional rectangular room with pretty pictures on the walls, but an airy space containing unusual shapes and brightly coloured objects. Reproductions of paintings from the museum's collection are used to illustrate art concepts such as colour, shape and texture. In one activity, wearing blindfolds, the children will be able to touch a series of framed textures from soft, cat-like fur and velvet to ribbed rubber and a bristly doormat. Interestingly, the architect of the children's gallery is Harald Thiede, who is an experienced homeshooling father, whose two adult children were homeschooled all the way through. Harold cleverly used the unusual height of the space to create spaces within a space by building a ramp (therefore accessible to wheelchairs) that leads to a platform or loft. Starting up the ramp, the children will pass a series of portraits in different styles, and they will be encouraged to put on coats or funny hats and to play-act and change their personalities.
From the top of the platform the children will have a bird's eye view of a huge aerial photograph showing the Union Buildings, Loftus Versfeld and the Art Museum in Arcadia Park. They will be given the opportunity to spend some time on the platform among kid-size tables and chairs, books and educational toys. Four groups of five children can be accommodated in the Children's Gallery at a time. Each group must be accompanied by a parent or a teacher and an education assistant of the Pretoria Art Museum. Pretoria Art Museum A visit to the Children's Gallery will cost R20 per child and R22 per adult (entrance fee to the Museum included). A school-guided tour of the Pretoria Art Museum costs R9 per visitor. The Pretoria Art Museum is open from Tuesdays to Sundays, 10h00 to 17h00. It is closed on Mondays and public holidays. Children’s Gallery tours are from Tuesdays to Saturdays. To book a school-guided tour (of about 1 to 1½ hours) and a Children's Gallery walkabout (of about 1 hour), contact Mmutle Kgokong at telephone 012-344 1807 or at arthurk@tshwane.gov.za. A word from the architect of this unique gallery, Harald Thiede: "When I received the brief for the Children's Gallery, the verticality of what was originally an atrium immediately impressed me. My first design sketches tried to maintain the simple box shape and maximum height to reinforce the openness and airiness offered by the existing perimeters, but soon revealed the fact that this could lead to a space that would impose itself on young children. Creating spaces within a space, and at different levels at the same time, logically led to my decision to create different platforms. To connect these, I almost immediately eliminated the use of stairs for two reasons: a visitor would be looking at exhibits and in such circumstances stairs are a hindrance, which would also make wheelchair access impossible. Thus, ramps with an accessible gradient were a logical conclusion. Ramps are also very at home in a gallery or art museum environment, at least since the Solomon Guggenheim Museum was built half a century ago. Providing a fire escape diagonally across the floor from the entrance leading from the North Gallery, precluded the running of ramps and platforms in a perimeter-bound fashion. As the visitor would be journeying upwardly all the time, while discovering and enjoying the exhibitions encountered along the way, it followed that the journey should end with a sense of arrival on a large platform from which most of the interior and the "journey route" should be visible, from a loft which would provide tree-house-like vistas. Eventually, the configuration of ramps and platforms began designing itself, with the triangles present in the vertical plane in the section of the roof construction, beginning to repeat themselves in the horizontal. To relieve the strict geometry of straight lines, the curved walls under the loft were also a solution that presented itself almost naturally. Again, the provision of a panorama wall, contained in the brief, automatically presented itself in the drum shape halfway through the journey. What made this project especially rewarding, was the positive and creative interaction with museum personnel with whom the ongoing, very constructive co-operation proved invaluable to the success of the eventual outcome. The resulting design is an experience of geometric shapes, volumes within a space and spaces inside volumes, variety in scale, light conditions, bold colours and sound perception."
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There is also a cave, just big enough for a couple of small children and an adventurous adult to crawl into. On the walls of the cave there are ancient San paintings, one of them depicting a hunter hiding under an animal skin, stalking an antelope. There is a real Springbok skin at hand for children to copy this scene.
