Les livrets pour enfants dans les musées d'art : vers une médiation culturelle et récréative

This article analyzes the Art Museum Guide for Children with Parents or Caregivers, a publication addressed to families or to children engaged in post-school activities. Our aim is to understand how these types of handbooks can help visitors to relate to culture in a wide perspective – how they develop an awareness of what the museum is and what it is for – and how these manage to take the child’s socioaffective needs into full account. By means of a discursive and “enunciative” approach, we investigate the dynamics of the relationship between children and paintings, children and adults, as well as of that between the child and the museum. Such topics, as illustrated through five recently published books, will be linked to the time-old (yet never fully resolved) question of the democratization of art. Our analysis will evidence a tendency towards an increase in the pleasant aspect of the visit, which is resembling more and more an edutainment, leaving aside the mere aspect of contemplation of beauty.