Pick a Color! Visit a Museum

Pick your favorite color. Or a color you don't see very often. Or even a color you don't like. Incorporate that into your next museum visit. Look with new eyes at museums.

Noticing colors might help you enjoy your next museum visit

As a frequent museum visitor, it can engage the brain in positive ways if you change up your visit habits. Focus on a color for your next museum visit. Museums and wellbeing go together!

This works best in a medium or large art museum but you can adapt it to almost any type of museum.

Focus on one color

Whether you look at paintings, furniture, quilts, porcelain, wallpaper, or glass, search out your color.

Find hidden versions of your color

Look closely. Look carefully. At first glance, it might be brown cut-velvet on a 19th century chair. But close examination might show shades of yellow or red or orange that create that shade of brown. Or, the blue sky in a landscape painting might have dabs of yellow hidden within.

Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children, by Auguste Renoir, Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain

"When I walked up close to that painting, I realized the blue and white dresses had dabs of dark yellow hidden within." – Visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Take photos

Creativity comes in many forms and builds mental wellness. Take pics of your color discoveries. Shoot close up, or at an angle, or from far away. Make it into a photo collage when you get home.

Try this with friends or family

Have each person pick a different color. Everyone can find examples of their color and share with everyone else.

Do this with very young children

Toddlers and young elementary school age kids benefit from having a goal or a project when they visit a museum. Looking for colors can be a good hook.

What artifact surprised you in regards to color? Changing your focus and noticing new and different things can be intriguing and rewarding. When were you surprised by a color in a museum?