The Met’s 81st Street Studio is Open!

Heidi Holder, chair of education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, surrounded by touchable panels of different varieties of wood in the museum’s new 81st Street Studio, an interactive space for children 3 to 11. Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times — Heidi Holder, chair of education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, surrounded by touchable panels of different varieties of wood in the museum’s new 81st Street Studio, an interactive space for children 3 to 11. Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 81st Street Studio is open to great reviews. The NYTimes calls in a “garden of artful delights.”

The Met hired the New York firm Bluecadet to design the studio’s digital technology. “Kids, particularly, are on devices all the time,” said Josh Goldblum, Bluecadet’s founder and chief executive. He said he wanted experiences that wouldn’t lead to endless staring at screens, but were “really about creating conversation and serendipity.”

Read more at Met’s 81st Street, A Garden of Artful Delight – NYTimes

FastCompany profiles 81st Street Studio. With great quotes from our design partners Koko Architecture and Design andthe fantastic Heidi Holder, the Met’s chair of Education, who has the article’s killer quote “This doesn’t look like the Met, this is the future of the Met.”

Read more at Inside the Met’s glorious (andfree) new play space for kids – FastCompany

Meanwhile NPR hosts a 4 minute audio segment where you can not only hear what the Met’s team has to say about the 81st Street Studio, but listen to the sounds of kids at play, all the while learning about art and science.

Listen to A new kids’ space at an art museum is actually about science – NPR