By Deborah Kim

When going on a family vaca-tion for an extended period of time, you’re probably left wondering what you could

do to keep you and your children occu-pied. With pool, beach, amusement park, and playground choices checked off the list, museums are frequent next options. If you’re a traveller, here are a few sugges-tions you can take to keep the kids enter-tained and you feeling relieved.

Penang Interactive Museum ( Penang, Malaysia)Smile for the camera!

The Made in Penang Interactive mu-seum in Malaysia is known for its unique gallery of three-dimensional murals and dioramas. Visitors will find fun posing for the colourful, eye-popping murals of Penang’s iconic landmarks, objects, and historical figures.

Some murals extend from the walls to the floors, some have face cutouts, and others have objects visitors can sit on for a more lifelike experience.

Besides the 3D art, the museum’s Dio-rama Gallery captures more of Penang through its incredibly detailed miniature

models. Each diorama captures a specific scene of Penang for visitors to see and in-terpret the story behind it.

There are also four interactive kiosks visitors can use to add on to their experience. By pointing their entrance ticket to the sensor or by standing near the screen, visitors will find themselves holding three-dimensional images of Penang’s landmarks, or wearing vivid opera masks from Sichuan, China.

You can learn more about Made in Penang Interactive Museum by visiting their website (www.madeinpenang.my)or their Facebook page.

Tokyo Museum of Contem-porary Art (Tokyo, Japan)

Ever wanted to see your child become part of a famous painting? How about seeing a small pair of hands emerging from Mona Lisa’s body and twisting her face? All of this is possible in Torafu Architect’s Haunted House from the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art. Under the exhibition entitled, “Ghosts, Underpants and Stars”, the Haunted House is one of five programmes aimed towards infants and primary school children.

The Haunted House sits in one gallery room where children can venture into a giant cube-shaped structure. Upon entering inside by walking through small secret passageways, the children can manipulate and alter the many paintings they see.

Unfortunately, the “Ghosts, Under-pants and Stars” exhibition closed last year on September and another inter-active exhibition—entitled “Wonderful World”—will open this summer from July 12 to August 21.

“Wonderful World” is created to offer young children a new way to appreciate art. With the help of five contemporary artists, the exhibition is comprised of familiar and intriguing motifs—such as fruits, trains, mirrors, animals, and building blocks—that are converted into sensory, interactive works for the children to discover.

The exhibit will help “imbue the

fresh, young minds of children with numerous, ‘exciting experiences that will move their hearts.’” The museum’s press release states. “This will allow them to discover a new person within themselves and by sharing their experiences with other children around them, they will be able to encounter each other’s worlds.”

Food Travel

30 JULY 25 – AUGUst 7, 2014 Epoch timEs

Char Koay Teow in Pen-

ang Interactive Museum (Pen-ang, Malaysia).

Visitors can become a part

of the three-dimensional

murals at the Made in Pen-

ang Interactive Museum.

5 Unique InteractiveMuseums That Will KeepYour Children Busy

pforphyllis.blogspot.com

malaysianmeanders

A child poses as one of the portraits from the Haunted House at The Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art .

courtesy of fuminari yoshitsugu

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