{"id":108807,"date":"2026-02-22T19:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T03:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.seattleschild.com\/?p=108807"},"modified":"2026-02-22T19:02:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T03:02:39","slug":"two-seattle-art-museums-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seattleschild.com\/two-seattle-art-museums-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Seattle art museums that surprise (in very different ways)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your kids think art museums are all quiet halls and \u201cdon\u2019t touch\u201d signs, Seattle’s scene offers a surprise. On one end of the spectrum is Cannonball Arts<\/a>, a raw, anything-goes space where kids can sketch, vote on art, and operate video installations. On the other is the Henry Art Gallery<\/a>, Washington\u2019s first public art museum, where big ideas and contemporary works spark rich conversations. I visited both with my family \u2014 and found two very different ways to experience art with kids.<\/p>\n

Cannonball Arts: New Kid on the Block<\/h4>\n

If you\u2019ve lived in Seattle long enough, saying Cannonball Arts is \u201cin the old Bed Bath and Beyond\u201d will suffice for directions; if you\u2019re new here, it\u2019s on 3rd and Virginia. The space is enormous: two floors of art and little else. Traditional museum niceties, like shiny floors and gallery walls, are minimal or absent. But when visiting with two kids under ten, Cannonball\u2019s DIY aesthetic worked in our favor: no one shushed us, and we could all relax and enjoy the art.<\/p>\n

Interactivity Abounds – Age Permitting<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, fair warning: kids are not permitted on two current installations. Stephanie Metz\u2019s hot-pink soft sculpture “Toxic Beauty<\/a>“, for example, conceals a fully functional mechanical bull ride, but only for guests 13 and up. My kids were disappointed they couldn\u2019t ride. Their disappointment faded as we rode the escalator to the second floor and explored the indoor sculpture park<\/a>, complete with live plants and a pond.<\/p>\n

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Cannonball Arts. (Image: Elizabeth Hunter \/ Seattle’s Child)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI loved seeing nature inside the building,\u201d said Henry, 7.<\/p>\n

At Cannonball, interactivity abounds. The kids sketched on easels at a figure drawing session, operated video artworks at the \u201cElectronics Department,\u201d and voted on their favorite image for “Mirror Mirror<\/a>“, an audience-generated exhibit.<\/p>\n

Mare Hirsch\u2019s “Transition Networks<\/a>” mesmerized our family. In the darkness of a freestanding black box theatre, Hirsch arranged dozens of warm-toned hanging lights to blink on and off at random, accompanied by clicking noises like the changing of timetables at a train station.<\/p>\n

Cannonball Arts isn\u2019t really a museum. Most of the artworks \u2014 even the big ones \u2014 are for sale. But it doesn\u2019t feel remotely like a gallery. It feels like something new.<\/p>\n

Cannonball Arts is open Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Kids under 10 are free; students and seniors are $20, adults are $25.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Cannonball Arts. (Image: Elizabeth Hunter \/ Seattle’s Child)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Henry Art Gallery:\u00a099 Years of Contemporary Arts<\/h4>\n

On the other end of history, Washington state\u2019s first public art museum, the Henry Art Gallery<\/a>, is 99 years old. Cora, my 9-year-old, and I visited the elder statesman of art museums to see two exhibitions by prominent Black American artists: Rodney McMillian: “Neighbors<\/a>,” and Kameelah Janan Rasheed: “we leak, we exceed<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Stranger (and Beautiful) Things<\/strong><\/p>\n

McMillian, 57, is a nationally renowned artist and Professor of Sculpture at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. “Neighbors” is his first exhibition at the Henry.<\/p>\n

The show features sculpture, painting, and video. More than a dozen all-white sculptures, which he calls \u201cspecimens,\u201d twist and grow like sea anemones covered in white bandages. Sitting on bits of rock or fabricated grass and not art-white plinths, they appear more like fossils in a natural history museum than sculptures. Some specimens, said Cora, look like polar bears, some like people dancing, and some like people making rude gestures.<\/p>\n

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“Specimen” at Henry Art Gallery. (Image: Elizabeth Hunter \/ Seattle’s Child)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Together with one of the Henry’s knowledgeable museum attendants, we concluded that these specimens were journeying toward McMillian\u2019s monumental, 40-ft painting, “44.8617 N by 93.5606 W Coordinates to an ascension (2018).” To Cora\u2019s delight, the huge landscape depicted a world more beautiful \u2014 but equally as alien \u2014 as the Upside Down from “Stranger Things”. Cora also loved the similarly \u201cghostly and witchy\u201d video work “untitled (neighbors) (2017)”, in which figures clad in eerie white robes danced and shook their bodies in the darkness.<\/p>\n

Talk About Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, 41, is a multidisciplinary artist on faculty at the Yale School of Art who makes high-concept art utilizing text fragments, sharp contrasts, video, and collage.<\/p>\n

“We leak; we exceed” was a great way to discuss the artistic process: what it takes to make an artwork and how the process of making art can be art itself. Cora was struck by the work “to chew a lapsed meaning until it loses all flavor (2020-2025)”, a series of jars, filled with various liquids and bits of torn, written text. \u201cIt must have taken so long to write it all out and then to rip it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Henry Art Gallery. (Image: Elizabeth Hunter \/ Seattle’s Child)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There is no artwork at the Henry right now better suited to discussing the beauty in artistic process than “Event 1 \u2013 4 (2025)”, which consists simply of four black and white pictures of a plastic bag that Rasheed filled with water, placed on an everyday scanner \u2014 and closed the lid. The image is the moment of burst, of leak. It\u2019s glorious.<\/p>\n

The Henry Art Gallery is open Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is always free.<\/em><\/p>\n

More Ways to Explore Art With Kids<\/h4>\n

If these two art spaces have you thinking about creativity and curiosity, there are plenty more ways to make art part of your family outings around Seattle:<\/p>\n