by Alita Ahearn - Art Teacher - Chapin Elementary School, Chapin, SC

Parents often wonder after a few years of their child producing artwork, how do you manage and care for the artwork that child produces?

The task of caring for and housing art is called curating.  This is so important in our society that there are people that do this for a living all day long, making sure that the art that our society values and cherishes is shown, stored and protected for generations to come.  

Curating your child's art can be a daunting task, since there is an emotional attachment involved with the art that has been produced.  Oftentimes the art incorporates pictures made of family members, pets or events that have happened in the lives of your family over the years and acts as a sort of diary of what your child was thinking at the time.  With all this in mind, you can see how easy it would be to hold onto each and every scrap of something that was produced by your child, but this is not teaching that some things need to be thrown away and discarded.  Some pieces are of value and some are just quick fun doodles that were done - and there may be many duplicates of the same doodle as the child starts experimenting with different drawing styles.

You cannot and should not keep everything that your child makes.  If you do feel like you need to keep a record of everything that was done, you can take a photograph of the work and save it in digital format in an online scrapbook, or even create a physical scrapbook to hold some of the work. Select one piece per year to nicely frame and hang prominently in your home.  You can either continue to hang one piece per year and build a collection, or you can replace pieces in the same frame as the child grows.  Framing artwork shows that you care about the child and his work.  Framed work also makes for a great conversation starter in your work office.  You can even have older children write an "Artist's Statement" about their work to be placed beside the work.  Some newspapers will even print small photos with short captions about your budding artist as a human interest story or you can publish your own stuff on the web.  Saving the top 10-20 pieces that your child did each year is a good number to strive for.  If you have 4 children that's 40-80 total pieces of art saved per year, which is plenty. By the time your crew goes off to college that could be over 1200 pieces of art saved from a family of 4 children.   No one wants to have to climb over all of your excess paperwork just to get into your home.  Child art can make a great gift for family members and certainly can help members of your family who may live far away by allowing them a bonding experience with your child.  Also making or purchasing a large flat art portfolio can be a neat way to store your child's work so it does not get dusty or manhandled by life.  Laminating is another method to consider, however it is frowned upon by professional artists as this will change the way the work looks.  It is usually not recommended with pieces to be framed or entered into art shows as it creates a shiny surface that can disrupt the viewing of the work and possibly impact the character of the materials that were used on the surface of the paper.  Avoid storing your very best work in basement, garage or attic spaces that do not have controlled heating and air as these spaces can be extremes of cold and hot as well as excessively damp or dry, which can allow artwork to rot or become moldy which is bad for your health.

With young child art from pre-school all the way to elementary school it becomes important to examine the stages of psychological development and growth in your child, as there are definitive benchmark stages that your child will go through that are recorded within his artwork.  These pieces are great to save, as they show the actual literal growth of your child over the years.

Below are the stages of developmental growth to look for when curating your child's art collection.

The most important thing to remember about curating child art is to get your child involved in the process.  This will give them a sense of ownership and will allow for some truly great discussions about their work and the thoughts behind the making of each piece.  Recording a few of these young discussions can be an amazing addition to any digital art album.  

Although curating can seem like a daunting task, once you get started it can really be a pleasure having things organized and in their place.  So get going and do a bit at a time and above all else remember that it's not really about the art... it's about your child.  The art is just the physical footprint that remains and reminds us all of what happened over time.  History truly is a wonderful thing...