Drawing next to the Masters: Children exploring the Latvian museum of art

On the 16th of June, the Latvian national museum of art was host to 20 young creative minds. Children between the ages of 4 and 16 came to the museum to not only get inspired by great artists, but to create art themselves. This was the second phase of our collaboration with Bullseye glass, you can read about the first part of the project here.

We invited the winners of the first competition in Āgenskalna market to the  art museum to help them find inspiration for their own drawings. The main focus for this was the work „Tirgus Jelgava“ by Johans Valters, an old painting of the market in the Latvian town Jelgava. The children were asked to look at the picture and ask their own questions about it. What are the differences to a modern market? What is similar? What do you think the people are carrying in their baskets? With this incentive, they could freely follow their own creativity and at the end of the day we ended up with many great artworks.

The ultimate goal of the project is to create a sculpture for Āgenskalna market from the children’s works. So this day was not only about the participants drawing individual paintings, but to work as a community to build something bigger. The final artwork will consist of four vertical pillars with elements from all the original drawings, which will still be accessible for visitors through a QR-Code on the sculpture.

However, the trip to the art museum was not only about the final statue. We also wanted to make sure that the children not only painted, but learnt something on this outing as well. The Latvian museum of art was the perfect place to bring art, especially Latvian art, closer to the children while still having fun. Because what better way to discover art than getting inspired by it? We were also happy that for many participants this trip was a family activity and a lot stayed after the drawing process to wander through the museum and look at more paintings.