At any art summit or symposium, “the future of museums” is a guaranteed and hotly discussed topic. The challenges facing today’s contemporary museums are myriad and dispiriting – they include ageing visitors, funding cuts and even censorship. Institutions have responded in different ways. Many have programmed more interactive shows, incorporating other disciplines such as dance and music, focusing on (and sometimes attempting to repair) their colonial histories, and hosting events that draw in local communities. 

One demographic that’s getting more attention, especially from European institutions, is a broad one – children. At Berlin’s Gropius Bau, Radical Playgrounds – a sprawling outdoor installation that dubs itself a cross between an adventure playground and sculpture park – invited multigenerational crowds to wander through its colourful tunnels last summer. Inside the museum is artist Kerstin Brätsch’s interactive installation, BAUBAU: A Play Space for Kids. Children are invited to explore the vibrant space and play as they please, transforming draperies, tape, boxes, old telephones and keyboards into original structures. In December, Turin’s Castello di Rivoli opened The Enchanted Castle exhibition across the museum’s third floor. The year-long showcase features a variety of works, such as Paola Pivi’s whimsical “Free Land Scape”, a vast swath of blue fabric suspended like a giant hammock that visitors can enter. In London, Young V&A – an entire venue dedicated to art and craft for kids – reopened in 2023 after a major revamp, and it won the Art Fund Museum of the Year award in the UK in 2024. Elsewhere, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is showing art made by New York children until 19 October. 

Far from the boring activity corners that youngsters were once banished to while their parents looked at paintings in hushed museum halls, these shows are loud and fun. They’re intriguing to art-savvy adults too: the work is by well-known contemporary stars such as Florentina Holzinger and Tomás Saraceno, or greats from art history, namely Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. 

In mid-July, Haus der Kunst in Munich joined in, presenting the sweeping exhibition For Children: Art Stories since 1968. Spotlighting more than 20 artists from different countries (including Olafur Eliasson, Yto Barrada and Bruce Nauman), the show explores art made for children since 1968, a time when social structures were shifting rapidly in the wake of student uprisings and protests around the world. It’s also, according to Haus der Kunst director Andrea Lissoni, a way to explore new models in exhibition-making – a giant interactive floor drawing stretches across the main hall and the exhibits spill onto the museum terrace.  

These shows, curated with children in mind, don’t have to be watered down. As part of Radical Playgrounds, Céline Condorelli’s colourful artwork overlaid the lines painted on playing fields for different sports. Explanatory texts described the work’s message – an exploration of the politics of play – to adults and particularly inquisitive youngsters, while everyone else simply has fun running and jumping across the lines. 

Museums are catching on to the fact that children are not only their audiences of the future but also tomorrow’s decision-makers – the best art, after all, presents alternative ideas and innovative ways of thinking. Both are increasingly important in an age when attention spans are short and driven by algorithms. Exhibitions aimed at children also provide public space – a fast-dwindling zone in many Western societies – for communities of all ages to come together.

“Art is a foundation of democracy. We need people to question things, and artists do that,” says Rebecca Raue, founder of Ephra, a Berlin-based nonprofit connecting youths to art through studio visits and roving exhibitions. “Art is an essential part of our community. It needs to be joyful and, once children are involved, there’s joy.” Museums sticking to traditional white-cube curatorial methods should take note.  

‘For Children: Art Stories since 1968’ runs at Haus der Kunst, Munich, through 1 February 2026.