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"It's really gross that they have dead people in here," he says to Frank Davin of Bridgeville.

Young Alex is Davin's godson. Davin and his wife Kim, both from Bridgeville, have chosen to take Alex to see the traveling exhibition "The Mysterious Bog People" on display at the museum through Jan. 22.

Part of the fun of exploring museums with children is finding out what it is that excites them. Children's museums are reliably age-appropriate, of course, and many museums that aren't specifically centered on children have exhibits targeted at them. But at some point, many parents want to introduce their children to "grown-up" exhibits, including sometimes abstract or challenging artworks -- and wonder what's appropriate, and when. As some educators point out, knowing what to expect prior to planning a family visit to a museum -- especially one not necessarily geared toward children -- is always a good idea. Some exhibits might be beyond comprehension for younger children, others could be disturbing. And it's not necessarily easy to figure out which is which.

The bog exhibit, the first-ever international touring exhibit to explore 10,000 years of rituals and sacrifice in northwestern Europe, features seven bog mummies and more than 330 artifacts that have never been displayed in the United States.

Like Alex, a lot of children around his age are fascinated with mummies.

"For whatever reason, young kids like mummies," says Dan Lagiovane, media relations manager for the museum. "In their minds, mummies aren't scary. We have people all the time ask us where are the mummies, and they are parents with young children."

Says Davin of Alex and the afternoon visit to the museum and the adjoining Carnegie Museum of Art, "He just thought we were coming to see the dinosaurs."

"They're dead," Alex chimes in about the mummies, "they can't do anything."

Art from a child's perspective

Emily Ballinger, a former preschool director and early childhood educator for a total of 18 schools before working for Chatham College, where she currently works in the admissions office, says parents need to be in tune and know the limits of their children.

"Have real expectations about your child," Ballinger says. "If he is 5 years old and he thinks he's going to see Spider-Man and he winds up disappointed, what's his reaction going to be?"

The bottom line, Ballinger says, is "you have to know what the exhibit is before you go and you have to ask yourself how much of this (exhibit) can my child take out of here?"

On a recent trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art, Jeanne and Tom Stefanac of Baldwin just had to take their 4-year-old granddaughter Storie Anne to see the painting "The Blue Madonna" by George de Forest Brush (1928) one more time.

"She was here at Christmastime and remembered the painting with the lady in the blue gown," Jeanne Stefanac says about her granddaughter, who is currently obsessed with Barbie dolls and their clothes. "She wanted to come back to see the lady in the blue gown. So, that's why we are here.

"She couldn't get over the fact that that the dress wasn't three-dimensional. The folds in the gown look so real she was trying to look behind it. She couldn't figure it out."

Like a lot of little girls her age, Storie Anne asks a lot of questions.

"Today she did ask us why the statues didn't have any clothes on," Stefanac says. "We just said that when artists make statues, that is sometimes how they do them, and that some artists choose to show how beautiful the body is. She took that for an OK answer."

In a museum, such situations provide a perfect opportunity for children and their families to learn together. As with Storie Anne's fascination, seeing objects in a museum often allows children to make connections to things in their own little world. That's why, as Ballinger says, it's not always necessary to play the role of expert, or even instructor, as you walk through a museum with your kids.

"I think some parents are doing that to make themselves feel good," Ballinger says. "They don't know how to make it age-appropriate. It has to be age-appropriate."

Caution about content

The question of what is "age appropriate" can be particularly pertinent when taking kids to museums that offer more cutting-edge content. For example, certain works in the recent Carnegie International on view at Carnegie Museum of Art earlier this year contained nudity and graphic representations of sexual activities, such as Katarzyna Kozyra's video work "The Rite of Spring" and Paul Chan's "Happiness (finally) after 35,000 Years of Civilization -- after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier."

And currently at The Andy Warhol Museum, the exhibitions "John Waters: Change of Life" and "John Waters Curates Andy's 'Porn'" (both through Sept. 4) include sexually explicit artworks and films by both Waters and Warhol, as well as selections from Warhol's personal porn collection.

"Sometimes people say, 'Oh my goodness, Warhol is not appropriate for children,'" says Jessica Gogan, assistant director for education and interpretation at The Warhol. "But on another level, I often say there's no one more appropriate. Where else could you actually see giant soup cans, pink cows and silver clouds that you can run around and touch? So, on one level the environment is very conducive to bringing and engaging children, but on another level, of course, there is content that would not be appropriate for young children."

Rock Kernick of Hampton has been taking his two sons to The Warhol ever since they were in strollers. Now that the boys are 13 and 11, he says he still takes a cautionary tack when visiting the museum and finds out what is on display before taking them there.

"I think right now I wouldn't take them upstairs to the seventh floor without knowing exactly what's up there," Kernick says in reference to the aforementioned exhibits.

But even with such content, he says it's still worthwhile to visit. "The Warhol is cutting-edge, nontraditional and clearly very innovative, and I think it makes a young person think, but it's up to the parent to be careful, to be at least as informed as the children about what they are going to see," Kernick says.

"I would never expose my kids to a video game that I didn't at least know a little bit about, and I wouldn't do the same thing at an art museum," he says.

Short attention spans

One thing that goes hand in hand with being selective is the fact that kids of all ages have limited attention spans. That can make visiting a museum something of a chore for youngsters and even parents, especially if they feel pressure to see everything in one visit. In fact, experts suggest that young children, especially preschoolers, are often overwhelmed by seeing too many things at one time and suggest that most preschoolers are best capable of absorbing exhibits in 10- to 15-minute sessions.

Ballinger suggests getting children involved in the various "hands-on" activities and programs that nearly every local museum offers. Either that, or create your own activities.

Something parents can do to make a trip to a museum more fun is to make a game out of it, Ballinger suggests. Applying such traditional games as "I Spy" and "Seek and Find" to a museum's permanent collection or traveling exhibition can create an engaging way for kids to interact and learn more about the works on display.

At the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Katie Barnard, curator of education for school and community programs, has created a scavenger hunt questionnaire for kids and parents who visit the current exhibition "American Scenery: Different Views in Hudson River School Painting." In her version of the scavenger hunt, visitors are asked to look for such things as a flying bird, a man rowing and cows crossing water.

"At the end of the scavenger hunt, if the kids return the questionnaire back to the front desk, then they get a prize," Barnard says.

It's all in an effort to make kids more involved with the exhibition and keep them focused.

"Instead of going and trying to see every painting and getting overwhelmed, if you go through with your child and use the scavenger hunt questionnaire you get to focus on a few of the paintings in a fun way and, as a result, it becomes more of an enriching experience," Barnard says.

But no matter how one approaches bringing their children to a museum, Ballinger says it's important to keep one thing in mind: "We're making our kids grow up so fast that we don't take time to ask ourselves, 'What is age-appropriate for our children?"

Expert advice for taking kids to cultural institutions

Cool Culture, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., helps low-income families have fun, educational visits to museums and other cultural institutions in New York City.

So the people there have a lot of experience with preparing for and making trips with children to museums.

Some tips from Cool Culture:

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