Contemporary Art Start: Art Tools for High Schools at MoCA, Los Angeles
Two weeks ago, from August 11-15, I had the pleasure of spending a week working with a number of outstanding art teachers at the MoCA, Los Angeles summer institute, Contemporary Art Start: Art Tools for High Schools. Organized by Jeanne Hoel and Denise Gray in MoCA’s Education Department, the institute brought together two dozen L.A. teachers from a variety of districts to learn more about bringing contemporary art into the classroom, as well as giving teachers the chance to create some of their own work inspired by Marlene Dumas (currently on view at the museum) and by Season 4 Art21 artists.
Over the course of one week, teachers created three separate works of art (one being a site-specific work on the 7th floor of the museum itself) and critically viewed eight different Season 4 artist segments including Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Bradford, Jenny Holzer, Lari Pittman, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. They also had the opportunity to learn ways of incorporating Art21 and contemporary art in their curriculum, options for encouraging active participation while watching film with students, ways of organizing a variety of critiques, and considerations before giving praise in the classroom. This was a packed week that featured a lot of hard work all around and it was an honor to be in Los Angeles as this institute kicked off its first year.
Please feel free to share some of your summer work and experiences as we prepare for a new school year. Exhibits that were particularly influential? Destinations that inspired new ideas for the classroom?
Mel Chin’s FUNDRED in San Francisco
Last Saturday, San Francisco Bay Area educators came together at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park to learn about FUNDRED/PAYDIRT, an important and compelling project initiated by Mel Chin (Season 1).
FUNDRED National Coordinator, Mary Rubin, delivered a dynamic presentation about some of Mel Chin’s other community artworks including the multi-facted installation project, Recolecciones, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose, CA.
Educators received a special FUNDRED operative kit, which includes all of the tools needed to implement the project with students this fall. Our community hopes to generate over 5,000 FUNDREDS to contribute to the vault, and we look forward to the armored truck’s pick-up visit in 2009. Students at our local collection center, Rooftop K-8 Alternative School, are studying jazz this year and plan to greet the truck in true New Orleans style.
To learn more about the FUNDRED/PAYDIRT project, visit www.fundred.org.
We have more FUNDRED operative kits to distribute. If you are an educator in California, leave a comment below with your email address. We’ll be happy to recruit you as a West Coast FUNDRED operative.
Celebrating Four Months…
Looking back, the Teaching With Contemporary Art column is off to an exciting beginning in our first four months. Since early May, we have had the opportunity to feature writing that focuses on topics such as:
- - Bringing Season 4 artists meaningfully into the classroom.
- - The difference between teaching students about making art vs. engaging with and discussing contemporary art.
- - Allora and Calzadilla in the classroom.
- - Mark Dion in the classroom.
- - Robert Ryman in the classroom.
- - Laurie Simmons in the classroom.
- - The Billy Joels of art education (although one passionate Billy Joel fan took issue with my analogy…).
- - Summer exhibits and best bets to check out, including Henry Moore at the New York Botanical Garden, Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim, SITE Santa Fe’s Biennial, Jeff Koons at the Chicago MCA, Martin Puryear in Washington DC and The Cinema Effect Part II at the Hirshhorn Museum.
- - Ways to slow down and recharge for the upcoming school year.
If you’re just returning from summer vacation… welcome back! We have arranged for gas prices to be reduced by a few cents. To celebrate and begin getting ready for the school year, reach back and check out some of the posts in our first four months. Write a comment for some of the posts you find interesting.
Next week: a report on Art Tools for High Schools, the week-long institute for high school teachers at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where Art21 presented workshops that focused on using our educational materials in the classroom.
Reality or Fiction at the Hirshhorn?
Another exhibition of contemporary art to see this summer in Washington D.C. is The Cinema Effect Part II: Realisms through September 7, 2008 at the Hirshhorn. A two-part exhibition, the second installation focuses on realisms, exploring notions of fiction and reality and sometimes, the overlaps between the two (the first installation explored dreams). In Realisms, artists use video and film in a multitude of ways including combining existing footage, re-staging events or films, and using actors to create new works. The works also range from single monitors to wall-size projections, such as Matthew Buckingham’s projection through a two-way mirror and Paul Chan’s projection on the floor.
I was most interested in works by Candice Breitz and Mungo Thomson. Candice Breitz’s Mothers and Fathers edits excerpts from popular films of mothers in one room and fathers in a second room. Presented on multiple monitors, the characters’ dialogues and actions overlap in interesting and sometimes revealing ways while also exploring constructions of mothers and fathers in movies.
Mungo Thomson’s New York, New York, New York, New York seemingly presents video on four screens of New York streets. Close observation (or reading the label) allows one to learn these are not New York City streets but instead Hollywood sets of New York City. This difference between reality and fiction is one that some visitors will discover while others will miss.
Realisms also includes screenings of Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave, a re-enactment of a 1984 miner’s strike whose participants included some of the miners, families, and townspeople who originally participated in the conflict. Kota Ezawa’s The Simpson Verdict, uses paper-cut animation of the OJ Simpson trial to present an alternate perspective of this heavily documented media event. Projected on the floor, Paul Chan’s 1st Light loops to present a sometimes empty sky that, as time passes, fills with falling debris from daily life.
While many museums have blogs, the Hirshhorn’s Ask the Artist Blog offers week-long opportunities to ask individual artists in The Cinema Effect questions about their work and practice. The Hirshhorn also offers a video preview of the exhibition and podcasts of related talks.
Video-based artwork offers challenges to visitors as well as museums in its display, but The Cinema Effect offers a successful reflection on this medium. As educators (logistical issues aside), some video and film works are easier to share with students than others. This past spring, we had many successful discussions about a video-based VOOM portrait by Robert Wilson on display at the museum where I work.
As an educator, have you discussed any video-based works of art by artists like Catherine Sullivan (Season 4), Mike Kelley (Season 3), Matthew Barney (Season 1) or others? What do you find challenging about discussing video art with your students?
Positively Puryear
There is no substitute for seeing Martin Puryear’s sculptures firsthand. Martin Puryear at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., spanning the museum’s two buildings, offers such an opportunity through September 28, 2008. In Art:21’s Martin Puryear episode (Season 2) I first learned about his working methods and interest in materials, both important elements in the 50 plus sculptures on view.
The contrast of the stone of the East Building with the wood of Puryear’s sculptures on view in the East Building is breathtaking. The East Building’s spacious court also gives Puryear’s sculptures room to breathe (a sense of life Puryear has talked about his sculptures having).
In the West Building’s Rotunda, Ladder for Booker T. Washington (featured prominently in Art:21) is installed. From certain angles the sculpture is dwarfed by the rotunda’s scale and the sculpture’s placement may even go unnoticed by some visitors. The time-lapse photographs of the installation and seeing the work installed offer possibilities for thinking about and discussing how installation and the choice of site affects the perception of (and potentially the interpretation) of a work of art.
Puryear’s sculptures are also shown in multiple galleries in the West Building. A gallery with five circular sculptures from 1978 to 1980 caught my attention. All wood (though different varieties), some are painted while the natural is manipulated in others. The ends of some connect, while others overlap and a few stop short of the ends meeting. While all circular, Puryear here offers the many possibilities of the circle. Each sculpture reflects the considerations he made his choices.
If you are not able to see Puryear’s sculptures firsthand, or if you want to share them with your students, the National Gallery has some useful online resources including images (with details of the surfaces) and a Family Guide with interesting, thoughtful questions to consider while looking at Puryear’s work.
This exhibition left me thinking about choices: Puryear’s choices of materials, choice in terms of the ways he works with materials, choices in repeating forms, choice of titles, as well as the choice of site. The choices artists make is one of my favorite themes to talk about with students visiting a museum. While formal analysis is often used to discuss choices, as an educator how have you discussed with your students the choices an artist has made in a work of art?
Starting Friday: Guest TWCA Writer Julie Thomson
Starting tomorrow and for the next two weeks, Julie Thomson will be guest writing for the Teaching With Contemporary Art column. Julie is the Associate Curator of Education at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University where she develops materials for docents and teachers to use with K-12 audiences. She has an M.A. in Art History and has worked at a number of museums including the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University and the Smith College Museum of Art.
We welcome her perspectives on recent exhibits in the Washington D.C. area and look forward to the next two columns, starting with a review and commentary on Art21, Season 2 artist Martin Puryear’s show at the National Gallery on Friday.
Slowing Down and Visualizing Approaches, Part 2
Following up on last week’s column, I was thinking about ways to slow down during the summer months and properly recharge for the upcoming school year. I also got to thinking about ways to inject new artists, media and themes into my teaching while preparing during the summer. Three ways I wanted to share include…..
Vacationing with a sketchbook and at least one way to make art:
New ideas come on suddenly. Without a way to take notes and perhaps create an example of the idea itself, some of the best stuff gets lost.
Getting together with other teachers to rethink and update curriculum maps:
I happen to be blessed in this area because I work with a tremendous team of teachers in Nyack who are willing to visualize new approaches to make the classes we offer more interesting for students AND teachers. We spent a full day together early in July to update and revise one of our core foundations courses and now each of us have the remainder of the summer to work off of that session in order to revise and update other advanced electives we teach.
Exploring exhibitions in person and online:
While we can’t possibly get to everything we want to see over the summer, many galleries and museums offer fantastic slideshows and background information on their exhibits. If you can’t get to the exhibit you want to see, check it out online and take note of where the show may be traveling. You might be able to see it in another city or at another time.
Teachers who incorporate contemporary art into their classes are constantly involved in a process of choosing who and what to share with students. What are some ways you make these decisions during the summer months?
Slowing Down and Visualizing Approaches
While vacationing locally this summer (since that’s all anyone has gas money for) and taking the necessary steps to slow down in order to feed your imagination and even your own art making, make sure to visit some beautiful and engaging exhibitions on view through the dog days of August. Two of these exhibits—Henry Moore’s Moore in America: Monumental Sculpture at the New York Botanical Garden and Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim Museum—are outstanding places for educators to revisit both of these artists, make important connections and visualize multiple approaches to working with our students.
When visiting the New York Botanical Garden for the Henry Moore show, plan to walk a few miles in order to see all of the sculptures. Allow for plenty of time with your sketchbook and/or camera. Most importantly, give the works attention and time; allow yourself to consider how you have approached the figure, sculpture, or figurative sculpture in your own classes while walking around the pieces. Take things slow and not only enjoy the grounds but also consider how we may teach more about context and the place a work is viewed in order to see it and engage with it.
At the Guggenheim Museum, Louise Bourgeois’ exhibit will not require nearly as much walking or a camera, but the possibilities for teaching about a wide range of sculptural materials, autobiographical themes, and depictions of the figure in a variety of roles will require a step or two backward, reflection, and a comfy sketchbook once again.
Other shows of interest for educators this summer include:
- Artist as Publisher at The Center for Book Arts in New York
- Lucky Number Seven, SITE Santa Fe’s 7th international biennial
- Jeff Koons at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
At the end of August, after spending some time with Marlene Dumas’ Measuring Your Own Grave at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, I look forward to sharing an artist-educator’s take on the exhibit as well as possibilities for teaching with Dumas’ work.
Do you have some “best bets” to check out this summer? If so, please share them! If you have visited one of the exhibits above, please share your comments and thoughts.
The Billy Joels of Art Education
This past Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about Billy Joel. The article focused on the fact that, despite not making a new recording in 15 years, Billy Joel still manages to sell out Shea Stadium—twice—in less than two hours. It got me thinking about the Billy Joels of art education. You know, the artists that we may admire and respect in one way or another, but have gotten tired of teaching about over and over. Think “Uptown Girl.” A fun song when it came out, but a song that’s been beaten into submission by its radio-friendliness. It got me thinking about the “Stairway to Heavens”of the art classroom and immediately I came up with three: Monet, Dali, and Warhol. These artists now have the unfortunate distinction of often having their names linked with the word “project”. For example, “Oh you tried a Warhol-project with your class.”
I started to think about artists that might offer very different takes on what Monet, Dali and Warhol often help us teach. Here’s are some initial ideas:
- Juxtapose the work of Andy Warhol with Alfredo Jaar. Have students compare how both of these artists explore the idea of becoming desensitized to certain images. Students can create, juxtapose or layer contemporary images and symbols that, from their perspective, the public has become desensitized to.
- Compare the works of Salvador Dali and An-My Lê. How do both artists deal with the the theme of violence in ways that are similar and very different? Students can create a variety of work that explores violence in our society. One approach might ask students to create a surreal illustration or staged photograph based on world news images.
- View and discuss the work of Claude Monet and Robert Adams side by side. How do the landscapes painted by Monet compare with the photo landscapes by Robert Adams? What kinds of things does each artist want the viewer to think about? Students can then create a painting or series of photographs that explore landscapes (both literal and figurative) of personal importance.
Who are the Billy Joels of your own classroom? How can we use and incorporate contemporary art to give these artists a different, and perhaps more meaningful, place in our teaching?
A new reason to go to M.I.T.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an amazing program where students can borrow a framed work by major artists from their List Visual Arts Center’s collection for an entire academic year. The Student Loan Art Program was founded in 1996 and boasts of over 400 pieces with which your dormroom can be beautified. There are plenty of big names on the list including Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Sol LeWitt, and Ed Ruscha to name a few, as well as many Art:21 artists like Allora & Calzadilla, Ida Applebroog, Roni Horn, Gabriel Orozco, Susan Rothenberg, Collier Schorr, Laurie Simmons, Nancy Spero, Richard Tuttle, and Fred Wilson. At the top of my own M.I.T. wishlist would be Bernd & Hilla Becher’s Cooling Tower. Learn more about the Student Loan Art Program here.
Above, from the M.I.T. Student Loan Art Program’s collection: Alex Katz’s Portrait of a Poet : Kenneth Koch, 1970
