By Matthew Jaffe, Sunset  senior writer

It was always one of the sweetest moments of the year: I can still remember the instant on the first day of school when I broke the seal and opened a new 64-count box of Crayola crayons. There was that unmistakable waxy aroma and a blast of colors. From burnt sienna to periwinkle, the crayons stood at attention, immaculate and pointy with possibilities.

I had a similar sensation walking into The New Children’s Museum in San Diego, a 50,000-square-foot facility devoted to visual arts that opened this past weekend.

Talk about possibilities. At time when schools have cut back on arts education, the museum puts the visual arts front and center in a dramatic building designed by San Diego architect Rob Wellington Quigley. 

This is no cutesy little playhouse but a soaring, light-filled space that also happens to be one of the greenest museums in the state: it incorporates recycled materials, uses a passive air handling system, and its elevator shaft doubles as a cooling tower.

On one gallery wall, there’s a quote from Andy Warhol, who declares, “Art is what you can get away with.” And at this museum, compared to the more staid destinations of my own field trips past, kids are going to get away with murder—and maybe create a lot of art in the process. Out front they can paint an old Volkswagen bug. Inside they can climb on a mural, get hands on (a nice word for messy), and ride around on Legways, scooter-like vehicles designed by artist Roman de Salvo. This is a museum to engage bodies as well as imaginations.

While most of the galleries and installations were designed for the museum, other pieces are works of art that were not specifically designed with kids in mind. That’s in keeping with the museum’s mission to bring sophisticated contemporary art to families without making false distinctions between what's for children and what's for their parents.

Here’s a museum that knows fun can be good for you, and what’s good for you can be fun. No matter how old you are.