Michael Beckmann is the Director of the Ipswich Art Gallery, the largest regional gallery in Queensland, which presents a lively program of audience-centred visual art and social history exhibitions. These include exhibitions developed through collaborations with artists, educators, historians and community groups.

Previously, Michael was Head of Access, Education and Regional Services at the Queensland Art Gallery, where he was project manager of the Asia-Pacific Triennial Education and Public Programs in 1999 and 2002, and curator of the Gallery's renowned Children's Exhibition Program. He has been involved in numerous gallery-based research projects, which have examined the ways various audiences learn from exhibitions.

ABSTRACT

The deep end: interactive and kinaesthetic art exhibits for young children

Most art galleries aim to cater for an increasing audience of children and families, however few provide the interactive and kinaesthetic experiences featured in science centres and children’s museums. Physical interaction, perhaps not surprisingly, is the most challenging of all audience expectations for an art gallery. This presentation looks at recent children’s exhibitions at the Ipswich Art Gallery, and at various exhibitions and children’s museum exhibits in the United States, which invited physical interaction – sometimes with startling consequences. These exhibits were developed from collaborations with children, artists and educators, and they required positioning the gallery’s traditional roles as secondary to the facilitation of visitor experience.