TATE KIDS

Morning, everyone.

BIG news from the galleries today. I’ll start at the beginning!

John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1831

John Constable (who was born in 1776, and died in 1837) is one of Britain’s best landscape painters. One of his very important paintings, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (painted in 1831) has been saved for the nation. This means that lots of groups and individuals (including Tate) put their money together to make sure the painting stays in galleries so you can come to visit it at a museum near you. You can come see it today if you (and your adults) like!

Some facts:
* The painting cost £23.1 million pounds (that’s a LOT of money – but it was actually a bit of a bargain because it’s worth around £40 million)
* It will be at Tate Britain until the end of the year, in the Constable Room.
* It will then go to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales; the National Galleries of Scotland; Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. It will go to those galleries for about a year each, and then back to Tate Britain in 2018
* It was at the National Gallery before coming to Tate Britain, and was there from 1983 – have you seen it already?
* If you have seen it, you’ll know it’s very big – over six feet wide!
* Constable loved this painting – he called it The Great Salisbury and said:

“I am told I got it to look better than anything I have yet done.”

To celebrate, Tate Kids have made a special Constable playsheet (it’s quite a large PDF file, by the way). Download, print and enjoy! Feel free to send me scans or snaps of your sheets to kids@tate.org.uk and I’ll post some up on this blog.

See you in the Constable room soon, I hope!

SJ

Tags: About Art, About Us, Cathedral, Constable, Landscapes, Playsheet, Sailsbury, Tate Britain

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NEWSFLASH!! OUR LICHTENSTEIN INSPIRED GAME IS NOW LIVE. PLAY DOT SHOP

GUEST BLOG ALERT! This is from our friend Emilia over at Kanoti. Enjoy – any questions, ask them in the comments, and we’ll get back you ASAP! SJ

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We are super excited to tell you about a new app we’re working on, due to arrive in Games very soon.

In the app,’Dot Shop’  you can create your very own comic panel in the style of a “Pop Art” artist like Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein is most famous for his big, action-packed paintings inspired by American comic books, but he did have other subjects too:

Landscape in Fog 1996, Roy Lichtenstein © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012

To use ‘Dot Shop’, first you upload a photo of your own face (or your Dad’s, or your sister’s, or anybody you like!). If you haven’t got a photo, you can choose a portrait from the Tate Collection instead. ‘Dot Shop’ will work its magic on your image so it looks like it’s made up of lots and lots of dots, just like a Pop Art painting. You can play with some of the settings (like the size of the dots and the brightness of the picture) to get it to look just how you want it!

Once you’re happy with your Pop Art-y picture, you can personalise it with all kinds of extras like tears, explosions, speech bubbles and more.

This app is extra-special because you can play it on your computer and on an iPad. You might have noticed that this isn’t normally possible. So we’re using a special technology called HTML5. People have been using HTML to build normal websites for years, and HTML5 is just the latest version, which lets you build loads of other cool stuff like games.

Keep an eye out for “Dot Shop” which will be online next month. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Tags: Games, Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein, Tate Modern

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Good evening to you all!

I’m pleased to report that we received all your entries to the Night Zookeeper competition here at the Night Zoo! They were all excellent and it was a very tough competition to judge.

We invited SJ to the Night Zoo to look through all of the entries together. This is a huge honour, as we can’t invite just anyone to our magical zoo. (SJ: Yes, I’m very lucky, ha!) SJ was able to meet a huge variety of animals, such as those that live in cereal bowls, volcanic monsters and even the mysterious rainbow fish.

Before beginning the judging we needed to establish the criteria. We decided that we would be looking for a complete mission including: Picture, Title and Story. We then looked for a good level of explanation and character in the mission. We also had to consider how well the mission would work on the Drawing Torch app.

Now that we had our criteria, we could begin judging. After many hours of debate, we were able to narrow the competition down to three contenders, eventually leading to one overall winner. The two runners up were as follows:

Louise Thomas, age 10
Mission Title: Help the sand snakes find something to cool them down

Charlotte Marriage age 9
Mission Title: Jurrasic X-Ray

And finally our winner, who created a fantastic mission as well as a new character for the Night Zoo.

Well done to Leon, age 6 for inventing ‘Monkey Vet saves the lion’

Mission Story: The Lion is poorly and the vet is out, a monkey vet steps in to save the day. What would Monkey Vet look like?

Leon will receive the new iPad mini for his efforts. WELL DONE LEON!!

Good night, we’ll be back soon
The Night Zookeeper

Tags: Competition, Games, night zookeeper, The Night Zookeeper

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For 2012, Tate Kids asked pupils at Rotherhithe Primary School, South East London to choose their favourite works from the Tate Kids Collection and share their thoughts. So, for the 24 days before Christmas, you can see their excellent choices and what they mean to them.

To get involved leave a comment in this post with a contact email (which we won’t publish – but make sure you ask permission from your adults) or tweet us @tate_kids.

And that’s not all. Each day, Tate Kids, Tate Publishing and Tate Shop will be giving you the chance to win a prize if you can answer our really (really) easy questions about the artworks. Also – don’t forget our Night Zookeeper competition, where you can win an iPad Mini.

“We love this heart-warming picture; its detail is so amazing and it has a lot of character. It is absolutely beautiful, the realism of it burns like a small fire of passion, hard work and love. It shows how much work the artist put into it with a golden tornado of paint and talent.”
Yousef and Johnnie, aged 10

Tags: Advent Calendar, Christmas, Competition

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For 2012, Tate Kids asked pupils at Rotherhithe Primary School, South East London to choose their favourite works from the Tate Kids Collection and share their thoughts. So, for the 24 days before Christmas, you can see their excellent choices and what they mean to them.

To get involved leave a comment in this post with a contact email (which we won’t publish – but make sure you ask permission from your adults) or tweet us @tate_kids.

And that’s not all. Each day, Tate Kids, Tate Publishing and Tate Shop will be giving you the chance to win a prize if you can answer our really (really) easy questions about the artworks. Also – don’t forget our Night Zookeeper competition, where you can win an iPad Mini.

Tags: Advent Calendar, Christmas, Competition

47 comments, Add your comment »