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This article is based on qualitative material from fieldwork conducted in three art museums, and looks at the processes of artistic socialisation in the context of children’s “contact” with works of art in museums. By observing mechanisms – both material and human – of bodily control, as well as the explicit and implicit rules and regulations produced by the museums, it demonstrates how children’s bodies are “trained” to adopt the “right” attitudes regarding artefacts. The revelation of this process of incorporation allows us to understand the way in which attitudes of deference towards art can be constructed from childhood.