Cultural practices for children in the USA Art Museums

The purpose of the article is to introduce analytically processed and generalized information about cultural practices of US art museums which is focused on children into the national cultural discourse. The methodology consists of such methods as analysis and synthesis, comparative as well as the physical observation method. The scientific novelty of work is to increase knowledge about the cultural practices of US art museums, which is focused on children. Unlike the European art museums, which until the last were far from this age category, some US art museums from the very beginning of their formation took into account the children's audience, and some museums generally viewed it as their target segment, and some consider working with children and adolescents as the main component of their mission (for example - Cleveland Museum of Art). The Art Institute of Chicago has differentiated museums programmes for children of different ages, from children aged 1.5 and graduating college students and universities. The Smithsonian American Art Institute has the separate department for the art communication for Afro-Americans, who come to him with the whole family to strengthen his identity, and to give his children the cultural traditions of their families and regions of origin. Participation in such cultural communication with the help of artifacts of museums for children is considered to be a crucial factor in the formation of the perception of the carriers of other cultural identities by the ideology "Different flowers on one flowerbed." Similar museum practices are based on a number of conceptual foundations: the concept of learning through the game, the idea of the formation of tolerance by means of artistic communication, the concept of an art museum as a cultural center of family leisure, the idea of informal education by means of art, the concept of strengthening its own ethnocultural identity of the child by means of art. Conclusions. Familiarity with practices that oriented on children by American art museums provides an opportunity for Ukrainian art museums to introduce similar methods to work with children's audiences.