MPS students tour Art Museum’s new Kohl’s Education Center

MILWAUKEE -- A new art center is taking shape at the Milwaukee Art Museum, specifically designed to inspire kids.

The Kohl's Education Center opens to the public this weekend, but a group of fifth-grade students from Milwaukee Public School’s Mary McLeod Bethune Academy got a sneak peak Thursday.

“We've located this Center right in the middle of the Art Museum, and people can come and go out to the galleries and go back. It’s really a place to come look, consider and to create,” Milwaukee Art Museum Director of Education Brigid Globensky said.

The Kohl's Education Center has three creative spaces - including a hands-on art studio where kids can create their own art, a lab where kids become the curators and x-ray works of art, and an art gallery that includes Picasso's “The Rooster."

Animation is also the focus of the center's gallery. “It's really about the Art Museum as a place of inspiration.  There are animators from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks who have been inspired by works of art and it's really a fun place where kids can make their own stop-motion animation,” Globensky said.

“I'm animating my own artwork, so just testing it out,” fifth-grader Chris Leitzke, who tried the stop-motion animation machine said.  “Taking blocks and moving it around.  I think it's very cool.”

“This is a place where they can let loose their own creative spirit and begin to understand how works of art are made,” Globensky said.

The Kohl's Education Center will be open to the public on Saturday.  It's made possible by a $3.7 million donation from Kohl's department stores and Kohl's Cares.