The Era of “Looking, Not Touching” in Museums Is Over: Summer Art School for Children at İstanbul Modern!

In the middle of the summer vacation, there is a wonderful alternative that steps outside conventional routes for children, bringing them together with the heart of the city and art. Keeping the culture and art rhythm of the city in its new Renzo Piano-designed building, İstanbul Modern opens its doors this summer for young art lovers aged 7–10. Running from July 7 to August 28, 2026, the Summer Art School promises children an experience where they view the museum not merely as a passive viewing space, but as a living studio where they actively produce.

Instead of “I Looked But Didn’t Understand,” “I Saw, Touched, Produced”

Traditional museum visits for children usually consist of rules like “Be quiet, don’t touch, just look”; this damages the natural bond they could establish with art right from the start. Designed alongside İstanbul Modern’s expert museum educators, this program places the most up-to-date approaches of museum pedagogy at its center. Children first view the works in the museum’s current collection and interpret them through their own window, then move to the workshop table with this inspiration to produce their own original works. Thus, museum exhibitions cease to be mere objects to be looked at and transform into a rich resource that triggers creativity.

8 Different Workshops Nurturing Skills and Imagination

Within the scope of the Summer Art School, 8 different themes have been crafted to develop children’s both technical and conceptual skills. Each workshop is designed to establish a dialogue with the works of master artists directly featured in the museum collection:

• Photocollage: The practice of building a brand-new visual world by cutting and pasting photographs.

• Imaginary Space: Redesigning architecture and the spaces we inhabit through the limits of imagination.

• Traces of Objects: Carrying the forms and traces of simple everyday items onto the canvas.

• Animal Kingdom: Both observing creatures in nature and reinterpreting them through an artistic language.

• Abstract Sculptures: The first steps of creating three-dimensional forms and building a connection with material.

• Shadow Drawings: Discovering that mysterious game between light, shadow, and visibility.

• Nature and City Landscapes: Transferring two different universes onto paper through the observing eye of a child.

Session Hours and “Summer Art School Certificate of Participation”

Workshop sessions are organized on weekdays (except Mondays, as the museum is closed) in two separate sessions:

• Morning Session: 10:30 – 12:30

• Afternoon Session: 13:30 – 15:30

The sweetest surprise of the program is the certificate of participation! Children participating in at least 4 out of these 8 different workshops are entitled to receive the “İstanbul Modern Summer Art School Certificate of Participation” at the end of the program. This certificate is not merely a symbolic souvenir; it serves as a personal art report card showing which techniques the child tried and which themes they touched upon throughout the summer.

İstanbul Modern continues to leave unforgettable marks in children’s lives through its deep-rooted museum education tradition maintained since 2004. Before quotas fill up for workshops running until August 28, do not forget to register your child for the themes they are interested in!