Anyone can be a curator!
Originally designed by Ben & Lee Sisto with Kara Stokowski.
Public Domain.
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What is Gallerie All Together?
Gallerie All Together is an experimental educational platform offering children and pre-teens a safe, fun introduction to the practice of curating in a gallery context. With emphasis on play, GAT promotes critical thinking, independent and collaborative decision making, and self confidence.
GAT understands curating as a suite of skills (reading, editing, imagining, collaborating) that increases one’s ability to understand complex problems, navigate uncertainty, and exist in the world with empathy. GAT is a framework that allows us to consider the physical and structural architecture of museums, who is prioritized and why, and to imagine ways to increase access and participation broadly.
GAT #1 in Pictures
Step 1: Cohorts of 10-12 kids at a time would enter a gallery with their families, kids finding space on a conversation rug (grown ups often seated to the side). The kids were given a top-level pitch about why curating is fun and cool.
Step 2: Our curators were then asked to visit “Art Storage,” a curtained-off area containing 100 or so objects and pictures. They selected one work each with assistance from volunteers or their grown ups.
Step 3: Curators instructed grown-up “Art Handlers” on where and how to display their selections as part of a salon-style group show. Kids oversaw the process, making tweaks and adjustments as we went.
Step 4: Next, we held an empowering, friendly, and optional conversation about their choices—what they liked, where they wanted things to go, and why. On their own, kids selected to stand up and present.
Step 5: After a brief 30 second moment of silence and reflection, we asked the group for ideas on a show title, or about themes they noticed when looking at the show as a whole.
Step 6: Curators invited their friends and families to explore the show, telling them all they’d learned. Some light party music was played for about 3 minutes so kids had an opportunity to get some energy out.
Poster Art
Four versions of an event poster were designed. Original art by Lee Sisto.
Typography and layout by Lee Sisto with Ben Sisto.
Gallerie All Together is truly public domain! Let us know what you get up to!
A second GAT is in the works for spring 2026, lead by Kara Stokowski. More info as it comes together will be found here.
This page and the GAT MAP Guide have been funded in part by a Community Engaged Projects grant from The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA). More at https://risca.online. Gallerie All Together was initially made possible through the generous support of the RISD Museum.
Gallerie All Together takes inspiration from the exhibition Anything Goes, held at the National Museum in Warsaw in 2016, and from the work of Director Agnieszka Morawińska. We also take inspiration from A New Critical Children’s Museology by Dr. Monica Eileen Patterson.
