Petit Louvre at the National Museum of History

I’ve never been to the Louvre. I hope to remedy that someday. But I have been to the Petit Louvre! Thanks to the opening cocktails of Museum 2012, we got to see this at night, with no other visitors except us.

Petit Louvre is a special exhibition of the National Museum of History in Taipei. Basically, its goal is to make exhibits that are proportional to children, ideally to remove the distance and fear in viewing art works. See the grand pyramid? Yep, it’s like that, it is made to scale for the young audience of the museum. The basic goal is that children should not be intimidated when viewing artworks.

Children should be able to view the artworks in the scale that adults can view them. The frames are also lowered so that it would be easier on the children’s eyes. Not all of the works from the Louvre are replicated, only key works, such as that of Venus de Milo.

There are also three-dimensional representations of paintings. It has cut-outs in them that children can look into.

There is also a part where the artworks were represented in cartoon form. The room is filled from top to bottom of replication. Such replication would help familiarize children in viewing artworks without fear, as opposed to works that they cannot touch or go too near to.

Details like these are also present. Though it might need some explaining to young children, they will view it with no malice if seen within the context of art and the museum. Something that I feel is lacking in my home country.

Some replication are an artwork by themselves. Exhibitions aimed at training young children in viewing artworks are something that is badly needed back at home. Familiarization instead of intimidation should be ingrained as they are growing up, perhaps nurturing the love for the arts.