Playfully Exploring Three Museum Exhibits in Milan

I feel really fortunate to have many family and friends living near one of my favorite cities in the world, Milan, Italy. Over the past several weeks, I had the chance to check out three wonderful exhibitions that are connected to science, art, technology and tinkering in different ways.

Two of these museum exhibtions were specifically designed for young learners and the third seems to have a special appeal to toddlers interested in big machinery. Before becoming a parent, I hadn’t thought too much about how informal learning spaces worked for very young learners and it’s been really interesting to experience things through the eyes of my two-year-old son. I’m becoming more and more interested in how to design playful and engaging environments for this age group.

The first museum space that we visited was a temporary exhibition of work by the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely displayed at the immense Pirelli Hangar Bicocca as part of the 100 year anniversary of Tinguley’s birth. There are so many tinkering connections with these kinetic sculptures from the clever mechanisms to the use of recycled materials in the installations.

A couple of highlights for me were Pit Stop (1984) which contained car parts as well as projectors, lenses and mirrors to combine to deconstructed auto with scenes from races showing the possibilities of connecting mechanisms and light & shadow play. Another work that fit in along these lines was a mirrored collaboration with Nikki de Saint Phalle called Le Champignon Magique (1989).

Another really interesting one that we unfortunately didn’t get to see working was the Rotozaza No. 2 (1967) which shatters six glass bottles when activated by museum facilitators. And a favorite of my son was the replica of Méta-Matic No.10 (2024) which actually produced a scribbling machine style art work to take home.

There’s something really striking about these large scale artworks that I think taps into the ways that young children obsess over garbage trucks or construction equipment. Having a huge open space made it possible to run around from one art work to the other and let us get a sense of the whole exhibition. We talked about the spinning objects for a long time and I’m certain that even without too many interactive elements the sculptures left a huge impression.

The second experience was a workshop at the MUBA (il Museo dei Bambini di Milano) developed and facilitated in partnership with ReMida Milano. I’ve been a fan of ReMida for a long time and previously visited their workshop and store in Bologna. The concept of these spaces is to receive industrial scraps and find ways to reuse them in the context of art, science and play.

We participated in a one hour workshop in the ReMida spacefor kids under 5 years old. There were about twenty stations set up around the room with either lots of an individual material (giant textured rubber pancakes, a giant container full of plastic bottles) or interesting combinations (bed springs and a string frame, cardboard tube slices and flat sheets or tulle scarves on a mirrored floor).

These simple provocations provided so many starting points for making and play. It was really interesting to watch my son move around the space, spend lots of time at a specific station and figure out new ways to play with the parts. The setting really encouraged the idea that there’s no right or wrong way to use the materials. And even with the combination of very young kids and lots of loose parts the mess was for the most part purposeful and I noticed that the skilled faciliators had everything reset in just 5-10 minutes after the end of the session.

It was my first time visiting the MUBA and I wished that we had more time to explore everything, but I felt that the concept of the creative reuse space inside a science center or childrens’ museum provides so many interesting possibilities for workshops and exhibit building. I saw lots of children and parents engaging together and I think that this type of project really lowers the threshold for collaborating at home on tinkering experiences.

And lastly it was really exciting to see the new PLAYLAB exhibition at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, a science center that I’ve been collaborating with for a long time. The space is “place of wonder and joy, designed to spark dialogue between young kids and their older carers. It is conceived as a place where childhood can really express itself in all its natural power and inclination towards observation, discovery, creativity.”

I really appreciated the fact that many artists were collaborators on the artworks in a similar way to the New Children’s Museum in San Diego, and I was again reminded about how effective artists can be as designers of exhibits for young children.

It’s a beautiful space that’s really well designed with varied elements for kids and parents to explore. There’s a digital projection room with some analog elements like shining light with a mirror or adding your own hands to the scene. One room has trees, nests and shiny eggs that create shimmering sounds similar to the musical bench but with an entire landscape to discover. Another space is full of drawers and doors to open with familiar and unfamiliar objects and materials to discover.

Each one of these environments has a wow factor because of the design of the furniture and objects but what struck me is the fact that they all reward a longer investigation with storytelling elements. Just as I see my son return to a collection of plastic animals or a set of colorful blocks again and again with different stories and connections, I could imagine each of these areas leading to new ways of playing and exploring co-designed by facilitators, parents and kids.

There’s also an atelier workshop with lots of space to move, curated materials sets with combination of natural objects and everyday things as well as ways to display the creations in the environment. The activity that I saw set up was a fun combination of mobiles and balancing sculptures using natural objects.

Each one of these museum experiences puts a slightly different slant on the idea of tinkering and STEAM. Seeing examples of artists like Jean Tinguley highlights the potential high ceilings for initial projects like automata or scribbling machines while inviting visitors into a larger ecosystem of makers. The ReMida atelier really shows how simple materials that can be found at home offer amazing provocations for tinkering. And the PLAYLAB shows how a beautifully designed environment and materials for learning can inspire storytelling, imagination and play. The combination of all of these elements provides a great set of initial experiences to develop a tinkering mindset with young learners.