Channeling Creativity: A Trip through the Enchanted Gate
This series of posts celebrates the 80th anniversary of The Museum of Modern Art’s formal commitment to museum education. Michelle Harvey is The Rona Roob Museum Archivist in the MoMA Archives.
“This is an enchanted gate. It is like no other gate you ever saw, and you can’t get through it unless you are no smaller than three and no bigger than 10. Once you come through it you are free to do whatever you want.” So begins the television program Through the Enchanted Gate, which debuted on NBC in 1952. The brainchild of Victor D’Amico, then Director of The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Education, and NBC vice president Ted Cott, the program was a televised adaptation of D’Amico’s Children’s Art Carnival, intended to inspire artistic creativity and free expression in children.
At the opening of the program, children walked through an “enchanted gate,” a bent metal frame in the silhouette of two children, one small and one larger. On the other side, a studio equipped with art supplies awaited them. A concept was presented and discussed, and the children were then set free to create an artwork based on that concept. One program, for example, titled “Making a Feeling and Seeing Picture,” began with a teacher from the People’s Art Center (a MoMA affiliate that offered studio art classes) asking the children to close their eyes, touch an object she held in her hand, and guess what it was. The children guessed that it was a balloon or a ball. In fact, it was a beach ball. When they opened their eyes, they were asked what their eyes could tell them (it has stripes) in addition to what their fingers already told them (it is large and round). After a discussion about what touching and seeing various materials — including a piece of colored cellophane — made them think and feel, the children were given a variety of textured supplies with which to make a collage.
While the home audience watched the children at work in the studio, the host of the program, Ben Grauer, would introduce the children from off camera. The children included Peggy, who is “barely four” and “digs for worms in the park.” Joseph is the biggest boy, at age 10, who “just got into the Enchanted Gate.” He goes to PS122 and enjoys “swimming with the gang.” John is in third grade at PS75. He “likes the planets and stars” and wants a dog. Pixie, who is four years old, loves to dance. “When she hears music, she can hardly stand still.” And Peter, also four, lives in the Village. He wants to be a clown when he grows up.
From the first episode, the host notes that the children “are doing special things, but they are not special children. Not more special than all children. They are just like you.” And this was a key concept of the program.
When I first learned that MoMA held art classes for children back in the 1940s and ’50s, I immediately pictured a teacher standing at the front of a room giving instructions on a specific mode of art-making while children dutifully followed along, attempting to produce the best drawing, painting, etc. within their technical capabilities. This, however, was decidedly not the point of these classes. Far from it. As Victor D’Amico stated in the WNBT press release for Through the Enchanted Gate, “The object of this program is to emphasize that all children are creative and that the art experience should not be limited to the talented only, or to those who are regarded as having special gifts.” As D’Amico put it at the end of an episode, we are “not making artists” but “individuals responsive to creativity and the world around them.”
As facilitators walked around the set of Through the Enchanted Gate, praise was given to children who created “their own shapes” or their “own feeling material” by, for example, folding paper over and over to give it texture. Emphasis was on individual innovation and expression. After discussing projects with the children, D’Amico devoted time at the end of each episode to speaking directly to the parents at home to promote better understanding of the concepts presented. He wanted parents to understand the importance of avoiding clichés and mimicking, stating that “clichés stand in the way of the child — they block him, hinder him.” Parents were encouraged to write to NBC to receive a free printed guide to further assist their children. In that guide, D’Amico asserted, “If adults impose their own ideas on the child, he will lose confidence in himself. Copying, coloring books and other devices that encourage imitation destroy the child’s power to create. Your child’s work may seem crude and immature, yet it is highly expressive and personal because it is an interpretation of what he feels and knows rather than an exact representation of the way things look.”
The teaching methods employed on Through the Enchanted Gate were the same ones D’Amico had developed in classes at the Museum (and parallel how MoMA’s Education staff works today). We know from firsthand accounts of people who attended those classes as children that this encouraging, open atmosphere was important to their development.
Another important part of Through the Enchanted Gate was making modern art more immediately accessible to viewers. At the end of “Make a Feeling and Seeing Picture,” for instance, D’Amico takes a moment to compare some of the materials made available to the children to specific elements of works in the MoMA collection. He holds up a swatch of carpet and compares the texture to the granular background of a Joan Miró sand painting, shown in reproduction. He asserts that a shaggy rug, with an open, not tight, weave shares an affinity with Vincent van Gogh’s brushstrokes. He notes that it doesn’t have to be the same material to evoke the same “rhythm and excitement.” He goes on to suggest that an uneven geometric pattern on a piece of fabric he shows is not unlike an Andreas Feininger photograph of New York City at night. In this way, he is hoping that the act of seeing, feeling, and experimenting with these various materials will increase one’s understanding and enjoyment of works by modern artists.
The first season of Through the Enchanted Gate consisted of 13 half-hour episodes. In addition to “Making a Feeling and Seeing Picture,” titles included “Discover What You Can Do with Paint,” “Paint a Picture of Sounds,” and “Make Animal Shapes from Clay.” Requests for the printed guide were received from around the country, with more than 5,000 copies being sent to parents, public schools, hospitals, and YMCA groups and camp directors.
MoMA has a long history of evaluating its programs, and in this case 2,280 questionnaires were sent out after the show’s first season; more than 25 percent were answered. All in all, the program was a huge success. Teachers noted that students would often share ideas they had learned from the program in class. Parents, too, reported on their children’s enthusiasm. One father wrote, “This is absolutely the first meaningful show for children since the inception of television.” A mother stated, “My son called me in to see your program on TV since he was enjoying it so much. I, too, became absorbed and almost burned part of our Sunday dinner.” Still another responded, “Yours is a happy marriage of entertainment and education.”
The survey revealed that children “liked the part of the program most that showed ‘children at work.’ They liked least any discussion between or talking to parents or adults of any kind.”
The audience proved to be fairly diverse. A summary report states, “Among the fathers, there were 102 different occupations, including many salesmen, businessmen, doctors and lawyers, but also including bus drivers, machinists, plumbers, window cleaners, florists, etc. Among mothers there were 28 occupations other than that of housewife. These included nurses, secretaries, dressmakers, actresses, post office clerks, lawyers, factory workers.”
In the MoMA Archives, in addition to the survey results, one file contains a typed transcript of a letter sent in by a child, Joy, with her art work after the very first episode of the program aired on her birthday. It reads, in part:
Today I am 12 years old. I am sorry I am not eligible to enter, but please accept my feeling picture. . . I would love to be able to create beautiful things, and feeling pictures would tell things that can be said with the hands without saying a word. I guess in that picture is a lot of my feelings. For instance, today is my birthday. That feels soft and silky. But my favorite brother is overseas in Italy. That’s tough and rough. The colors too are feelings — reds, greens, blacks, blues. A candy paper with a soft piece of cotton in the center tells something also. So if my feeling picture can serve some purpose in your show for children, I will feel very happy about it.
With the feedback gathered, it was decided that the second season, consisting of another 13 episodes (which aired in 1953), would focus on all members of the family, not just children ages three to 10. A press release states, “By sharing the satisfaction and pleasure that come from self-expression, both children and adults will learn to appreciate each other more; and adults, in particular, will learn to understand and respect the creative efforts of children.”
The introduction to season two invited viewers to enter the gate, “whether you’re three or 30, nine or 90.” All were included: “families who live together, work together, and play together…. You and your sister and brother; father and mother; yes, your grandmother and grandfather, too.”
In the second season, it was common to see that parents were often less confident about their creative endeavors than their children. One mother expresses concern over her project, and D’Amico assures her, “This isn’t for you to be frustrated or worried about. Follow your feeling inside.” During the episode “Up in the Sky,” Mrs. Winkler feels the stars she is painting are “too spidery.” D’Amico suggests a way to achieve her desired effect: by applying water to the paper first, and then dropping the colors onto the sheet. It is important that the instruction he gives here is only in response to her stated goal. On the episode “The City Inspired,” a mother who is creating a collage depicting an aerial view of New York City asks D’Amico, “Does it look too cluttered?” He responds, “Do you think New York is cluttered?” When she responds “Yes,” he assures her, “Then it looks as it should.” He affords the parents the same confidence that the facilitators give the children in trusting their own creative instincts.
Plans were in the works to continue the series, but due to staff changes at NBC, the program ended after the second season. René d’Harnoncourt, Director of the Museum during the 1950s, felt that, “Through the Enchanted Gate points the way to far-reaching possibilities in the Museum’s constant aim to expand all its educational opportunities to wider and wider audiences.” The television program had followed the Museum’s earlier success in extending its educational programs through radio broadcasts, including the Art in America series of the 1930s; traveling exhibitions; recorded slide talks that were sent with portfolios of images to various schools; and so forth. But with television, MoMA was able to reach children and parents directly in their homes. The prior reach was extended even further, paving the way for the kinds of programs we have today, including massive open online courses (MOOCs) on Coursera. Through the Enchanted Gate was but one use of an emerging technology to extend MoMA’s reach decades ago, and I am always impressed with the ways my colleagues in the Museum’s Education department continue, all these years later, to innovate and address the needs of various audiences who can benefit from all the resources we have to offer.
