mima is open!

Year 2 were lucky enough to be the first school class in Middlesbrough to visit the newly opened MIMA art gallery.

Claire at MIMA showed the year 2 class around, and showed them all the different art pieces. The first piece they looked at, was a huge piece by DJ Simpson - a huge plastic and shiny surface with wooden bits gouged out in circles and spirals!

They also saw some pictures by Jackson Pollock, Damien Hirst and Picasso. However the pupils seemed to like the pictures drawn by Chris Offili the most who used a pencil to draw small heads with afro hair!

The Year 2 class then got artistic themselves! They pretended to be Marcel Duchamp, by dropping string onto the floor and drawing around it! They soon created their own masterpiece!

Getting artistic

The Evening Gazette newspaper and the BBC joined the year 2 class at the first class visit around mima, and interviewed some of the children and teachers. This feature was on BBC Radio Cleveland breakfast show the morning after their visit!

See the BBC article and listen to clips of the interviews here.

Year 2 really enjoyed their visit to MIMA and would like to go again! Since going to MIMA the class has had a MIMA afternoon, where they created their own art work and pretended to be different artists.

The class also recorded their own 'bird calls' saying artists names, just like Lousie Lawlers at MIMA! You can listen to their work here.

You can also see more pictures from the year 2 visit in our own mima gallery.