Artnet News's Wet Paint column announces Brian Belott's upcoming exhibition "Upside Down Zebra" at the Watermill Center in Water Mill, Hamptons, opening next week. The show features over 400 artworks made by children under age 6, including offspring of Willem de Kooning and Henry Miller, alongside 40 response pieces by contemporary artists like Robert Nava, Chris Martin, Darren Bader, Katherine Bernhardt, Carroll Dunham, and Christopher Wool. Belott draws from the archive of educator and psychologist Rhoda Kellogg, who collected over two million children's drawings, organizing works by her 20 types of scribbles.
The exhibition matters because it challenges adult-centric views of creativity by elevating children's mark-making as a serious artistic practice. Belott aims to spread Kellogg's methods, which advocate allowing children to remain in abstract scribbling states longer and asking open-ended questions about their art. The show also coincides with Watermill's annual benefit honoring Isabella Rossellini and Diébédo Francis Kéré, highlighting how experimental venues can bridge childlike creativity with contemporary art discourse.