The BEST museums and art galleries for kids to visit online from home
- By: Auckland for Kids
- Published:
There are lots of fantastic virtual tours and online collections of the best art galleries and museums from around the world for families to enjoy from the comfort of your own home. Whilst we still think visiting museums and art galleries in person is the most fun for kids (and adults!), learning about the stories behind the collections can actually be more fun at home. So while we are all housebound with COVID-19 lockdown it’s the perfect time to take a FREE world tour from the comfort of your home with the kids visiting one museum or gallery a day. You won’t need to exit past the gift shop either!
MUSEUMS FOR KIDS TO VISIT ONLINE
British Museum
Go on a virtual tour of the famous British Museum in London, UK. Explore the visual timeline of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Europe and its objects and listen to recorded stories about them.
Auckland Museum
Visit the Auckland Museum at Hom for Kids during lock down. Watch videos of how volcanoes are made, make native birds come alive in a puzzle, take a virtual tour around the museum, learn about the collection online. Go on a discovery of Sea Monsters at your place with lot’s of kids activities to enjoy at home. Kids can find out “how fast could an Ichthyosaur swim?” or “How long was a Plesiosaur?” and lots of other interesting facts. Or adventuring is more their thing they can have an explore of the Sir Edmund Hiliary archive.
USS Midway Museum
Experience the excitement of America’s favorite aircraft carrier museum from home! The USS Midway Museum in San Diego has virtual tours of their most popular spaces and exhibits, kids activity sheets, documentary video series, written historical accounts and other educational resources.
Te Papa
Dive into the collections at Te Papa museum in Wellington, New Zealand to explore the 800,000 artworks, taonga, photographs, collection objects and botanical and zoological specimens from their collection. There are free downloadable activity booklets for use at home or in the classroom and lots of video’s on their YouTube channel: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
The Anne Frank House
Visit The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Netherlands online. Take a virtual tour of each room in the secret annex on the Prisengracht where the Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pieffer who went into hiding in 1942 during WWW2 and where Anne Frank wrote her diary.
Smithsonian Natural History Museum
Visit the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, America online. Discover their new online exhibition “Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World“, take a look at their thousands of objects in 3D, view their online collection, learn from the Smithsonian scientists with Science How webcasts or take a virtual tour of the museum.
MOTAT
MOTAT.Fun designed by the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, New Zealand brings the fun to your place with boredom busting activities, videos and stories of adventure and innovation during lockdown.
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium in San Francisco, America is a museum that lets kids explore science, art and human perception. Explore their vast collection of FREE online experiences to feed your kids curiosity. And if you are lucky enough to visit San Francisco one day, put the Exploratorium on your must see list of places to visit with your family.
America Museum of Natural History
The America Museum of Natural History in New York, America has a fun science OLogy website with fun activities, games, and videos for kids.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Kids will have fun designing a wig online at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, United Kingdom. The museums online collections are also worth delving into.
London Transport Museum
Discover the London Transport Museum online, one of the world’s leading museum of urban transport. Their online collection is over 100,000 photos documenting the changing face of London.
State Hermitage Museum
Take a journey through the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia in this 5 hour video tour of the 45 galleries or you can take a selective room by room visit of the museum here.
National Museum of Scotland
Explore the National Museum of Scotland on a virtual tour and find out more and view thousands of objects online from the museum’s collections.
Boston Children's Museum
Take a virtual tour of the three floors of the Boston Children’s Museum in Boston, America and browse their online collection.
ART GALLERIES FOR KIDS TO VISIT ONLINE
The Broad
Browse stunning contemporary art collection at The Broad in Los Angeles, America online. Some our favourites from the collection are Jeff Koons giant tulips and balloon dog (featured cover image) , Andy Warhol‘s artworks and Yayoi Kusama‘s Infinity Mirrored Room.
TATE Modern
Visit the Tate Modern in London, UK to see their online displays. They also have a dedicated kids website Tate Kids where kids can make art, play games and quizzers and explore.
The Metropolitan Museum
Enjoy MetKids which is made for, with and by kids to enjoy art by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are children led interviews with curators and artists, a time machine to travel in to explore art and streamable videos for kids to make things too.
National Gallery of Victoria
Discover the virtual tours at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Families can also explore new ways to be creative at home and use the FREE Kids at home activities and games for fun, relaxation and self-expression.
Musée de l'Orangerie
Visit one of our favourite galleries Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, France to take a virtual tour of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies.
Auckland Art Gallery
Explore Auckland Art Galleries online collections of more than 17,000 works including artwork, blogs, publications, videos and more.
Musée d’Orsay
Visit the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France to see their large colleciton of impressionist and post impressionist work including van Gogh, Degas, Cézanne and more.
Van Gogh Museum
Discover the famous post-impressionist artworks of Vincent van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum online in Amsterdam, Netherlands. You can take a virtual tour of the museum floor by floor too. Here is the virtual tour of the Ground Floor of the museum showing both the artwork and the building.
Guggenheim Bilbao
Visit the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain to discover their online content about their exhibitions and collections. We love the curved Frank Gehry building as much as the art in museum.
Lux Art Institute
The Lux Art Institute in San Diego, America offers virtual tours of art exhibitions, live broadcasts diving deeper into the content and educational programs for adults and families to explore at home.
Rijksmuseuem
Experience the Rijksmuseuem online in Amsterdam, Netherlands to see their impressive collections of the world-famous masterworks including the Milkmaid by Vermeer and Rembrandt’s Night Watch.
The Louvre
Visit The Louvre in Paris, France to view their vast collection online. They have a fun collection of One Minute in a Museum YouTube videos for the kids to enjoy learning about different artworks. See their Mona Lisa video for kids here
Picasso Museum
Take a virtual tour of the Courtyards of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain.
MoMA New York
Enjoy MoMA New York’s museum from home where you can read watch and listen where ever you are. View their evolving collection of more than 85,000 online works of art.
Art Institute of Chicago
Explore the online collection of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, America. Get the stories behind the objects, watch videos and read the free online publications.
La Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
Discover the online collection and stories about the La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea art collection in Rome, Italy.
MMCA Korea
Visit the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MMCA in Korea on Google Arts and Culture and take an online tour through the six floors of art.
Johannesburg Art Gallery
Visit the Johannesburg Art Gallery online to discover 500 works from Africa’s largest art gallery.
National Museum of Western Art
The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan focuses on impressionist paintings and Auguste Rodin’s sculptures. Viist the online collection and stories of the museum online at Google Arts & Culture.
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