the house and rotating the displays periodically. In decorating magazines,
I've seen photographs of kitchens that have an entire wall covered with cork for tacking up artwork. I love this idea, but I'm small-time by comparison. In my house, the refrigerator door is the first stop for artwork coming home from school. I use as many heavy-duty magnets as I can find to make sure the stuff stays put. For special drawings, I've found that inexpensive frames (either the glass clip kind or the inch-thick clear plastic boxes) are perfect for a rotating gallery. Sometimes we mat the work on construction paper (which conveniently fades in the sun, letting you know when it's time to change the art).
For small three-dimensional pieces and freestanding framed artwork, we built a long, shallow set of shelves. To keep frames from sliding off, we nailed a thin dowel along the the edge of the shelf. Of course, you can use a regular bookshelf, but it helps if the shelves have adjustable heights so you can accommodate Popsicle stick sculptures or papier-mâché figures of any shape and size.
A poll of my friends turned up even more ideas: One mom covers plain old cork bulletin boards with fabric and hangs them in her living room. She uses these prominent spaces for displaying art. Another friend strings a clothesline along one kitchen wall and pins the artwork to it. A third rotates pictures on the mudroom walls with two-sided adhesive foam squares. Everyone entering the house gets a quick gallery tour.
If you run out of wall space, encourage your kids to think of their grandparents' houses (or anywhere else their art might be cherished) as museums for their work. Our children's grandparents have fairly large private collections. I doubt they ever throw any of it away, and I don't really want to know.
