Researching children’s play and contemporary art

Abstract

The New Children’s Museum is a museum in which each ‘exhibit’ is a conceptual work of art by a contemporary artist, commissioned by the museum as a springboard for playful experiences. Neither a children’s museum, where the focus is on learning through play, nor a standard contemporary art museum, The New Children’s Museum is a hybrid space that calls for new ways of doing research, requiring tools that can go beyond positivist and ethnographic approaches. This review assembles examples of alternative research methodologies, drawn from diverse practices such as performance studies and performance art, that may contribute to mapping the complexities presented by a children’s museum that also actively engages in the production of contemporary art. It includes some experiments with a/r/tography, and in conclusion offers a method assemblage that might be termed ‘ludo-artographic’.