Art: Magical museum tour

In a cascade of puffy jackets and flying gloves, 75 third-graders from Dowling Urban Environment school charged off their bus and into the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, abuzz with excitement. The south Minneapolis youngsters weren't museum veterans, but they picked up the rules in a nanosecond. Line up two-by-two, don't touch the art or lean on anything, stick with the group, and ask all the questions you like.

Then the Dowling kids set off on an hourlong tour that took them back to ancient Rome, medieval Europe and North America when Indians wore moccasins. They went around the world to Czechoslovakia, China and Tibet.

Sophisticates all, they walked right past three nude bronze ladies without a titter or a poke. "If you're embarrassed to see people who don't have any clothes on, just look at your feet when we go through here," advised JeanMarie Burtness, a volunteer guide who also teaches part-time at Champlin Park High School.

"Don't worry. We've had the naked talk," said Frank Suppa, the group's Dowling teacher.

Their recent trip came courtesy of the Friends of the Institute, a 1,000-member volunteer support group that gave the museum $60,000 last week to double an endowment that provides free bus transit to certain school groups. The 11-year-old program paid for about 60 buses carrying 3,000 kids this year. Starting in July, it expects to double those numbers.

Admission to the museum is always free, but busing fees sometimes prevent schools from staging field trips. To eliminate that barrier, the institute offers free bus service to Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools for grades three through five. Participating schools must demonstrate economic need, which is typically tied to the number of students who receive free or reduced-price lunches. Walker Art Center also provides bus subsidies for school tours of its galleries and the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

"We haven't decided yet whether we will add more grades within the Twin Cities or stay with the same ages and extend the program into the suburbs, where we've been getting more requests," said Suzanne Payne, president of Friends of the Institute.

Before seeing the museum's treasures, the Dowling kids talked about things they treasured -- a lucky silver acorn, a tune, a quartz rock. They rubbed the brass rods in the museum's old-fashioned 1930s elevator, struck the same pose as the marble sculpture of a Greek athlete and learned the word "aerodynamic" to describe a streamlined car in the design galleries.

"Take a good look at these moccasins, because later this spring we're going to study Native Americans and we'll look at their traditional clothes," Suppa said as they peered at a beaded buckskin shirt and dozens of ornately beaded moccasins.

Asked later what they liked best about the tour, the kids waved their hands for the jade mountain, the car, the moccasins, the Picasso "monkey head" sculpture, the Tibetan sand mandala.

"It was all great!" said third-grader Adaden Ali.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431