Children make their mark at the Haus der Kunst
On the marble floor of Haus der Kunst’s main hall, smudges of crayons spread over pale stone and slide through its grid of seams. Ei Arakawa-Nash’s Mega Please Draw Freely began with an invitation that sounds almost suspiciously simple inside a museum: pick a color and draw.
Each visitor adds to the same surface and lends a dense, changing field that belonged to all played within it. Children they left behind evidence of their presence, while the architecture became part of the image. This license sets the terms for children. Art Stories from 1968, which collected works for young audiences by more than twenty artists.
THE report it follows a shift that took place in the late 1960s, when artists began to approach children as competent audiences and collaborators with a role in shaping the work itself. It becomes an art history of redistributed authorship. Its central question concerns who can define a work of art and how it can be used.
For Kids. Art stories since 1968, Ei Arakawa-Nash, Mega Please Draw Freely, 2025, exhibition view. Haus der Kunst München, 2025 | image by Agostino Osio
a museum built through action
Its historical starting point House of Art‘small For Children. Art Stories since 1968 is very close to the archive of the KEKS, a group formed around the Munich Academy of Art in 1968. Its name is an acronym for the German words art and education with cybernetics and sociology.
KEKS members left behind conventional courses and moved to the city, where simple materials became tools of collective experiments. The team saw art as something that happened between people, with no finished object waiting at the end.
After presenting the Biennale Bambini, the Venice Biennale’s first contribution to art education, in 1970, KEKS returned to Munich two years later to establish a center for children and youth within the Haus der Kunst. They envisioned the museum as an environment that its users could change through experience.
Arakawa-Nash captures this story through Jirō Yoshihara’s 1956 Gutai action, which invited children and adults to paint together on a large outdoor canvas in Ashiya Park. At Haus der Kunst, the gesture moves in the marble as an ever-developing design.
For Kids. Art stories since 1968, Basim Magdy, PINGPINPOOLPONG, or How I Learned to Laugh at Failure, 2018, exhibition view, Haus der Kunst München, 2025 | image by Agostino Osio
rules made to be rewritten by children
Basim Magdy’s PINGPINPOOLPONG, or how I learned to laugh at failure empowers children to create their own rules for a seemingly familiar game. The modified tables combine ping pong with pool, then interrupt both with pinball-like obstacles. Balls disappear into holes or bounce at odd angles.
Winning becomes almost impossible, which is part of the design. A rulebook developed with children encourages players to enjoy the randomness and celebrate together, while a blackboard leaves room for further invention.
For Children. Art Stories since 1968, Ernesto Neto, Uni Verso Bebé II Lab, 2007/2025, exhibition view, Haus der Kunst Munich, 2025 | image by Agostino Osio
At the center of the exhibition, Uni Verso Baby II Lab with Ernesto Neto it approaches learning through the body before it is dominated by language. Soft fabric forms hang from a shimmering tent-like structure, creating an interior that evokes the sanctuary of the womb.
Visitors take off their shoes and crawl inside, where they can lie between elastic membranes and stuffed volumes. Neto gives touch and physical awareness the state of knowing. The game begins here as a curiosity, with no prescribed answer waiting at the end.
For Kids. Art stories since 1968, KOO JEONG A, HAUS DER MAGNET, 2025, exhibition view, Haus der Kunst Munich, 2025 | image by Agostino Osio
to build the world and then tear it down
Opposite the terrace overlooking the Eisbach, KOO JEONG A’S HOUSE OF MAGNETS turns sculpture into a space whose form becomes legible through use. The wooden structure wraps around a large magnet-shaped center, with curves for skating and extended platforms for watching or resting.
Skaters choose their own lines on its surfaces, while the photoluminescent paint absorbs sunlight and glows after dark. The museum provides the structure. Its users decide the pace.
For Kids. Art stories since 1968, Ólafur Elíasson, The cubic structural evolution project, 2004, exhibition view, Haus der Kunst München, 2025 | image by Agostino Osio
The building blocks bring the same question to the model city, although each project carries a different sense of time. The work of cubic structural evolution with Olafur Eliasson places more than 500 kg of white LEGO bricks on a round table, where a shared city is built and dismantled throughout the exhibition.
Meanwhile, by Yto Barrada Lyautey Unit Blocks (Play) begins with figures spelling LYAUTEY, referring to the first resident general of French-occupied Morocco and his role in the urban transformation of Casablanca. Visitors can split the name and use the blocks to form other words. One project asks how a future city could be built together. The other asks what stories are already embedded in his pieces.
