Wrestling with the Past: A TwCA 2008-2009 Roundup

Eleanor Antin, Art21 production still

It’s been quite a year. Quite an academic year, that is. Between the country voicing a collective NO to four more years of the same Bushed policies and Bernie Madoff being sentenced to the equivalent of a few lifetimes in prison, a lot has happened and been written about. While I haven’t had any obsessed music fans calling to threaten me lately (haven’t I mentioned the response to The Billy Joels of Art Education??) I just wanted to take this opportunity at the beginning of summer to provide a TwCA roundup of sorts….

The year started back in September 2008 with an article on Mining Ideas - examining the use of sketchbooks in the classroom. Thinking Through Possibilities shared a variety of student sketchbook work as result of this popular theme, and students continued to use sketchbooks in order to respond to and create work influenced by the highly controversial Bodies exhibit.

I was honored to be given the opportunity to interview Eleanor Antin for the TwCA column in December, and right through the holidays she and I e-mailed back and forth (and back and forth… thank you Eleanor!) to create Myths, Metaphors and More: An Interview with Eleanor Antin, which was then published in two parts on January 14th and 15th, 2009.

As winter literally plowed along it became necessary to tackle the bizarre nature of art competitions in What’s an Art Contest? The following week led to a post highlighting how contemporary artists are relying more and more on others to make their work. It Takes Two… or Two Hundred was inspired by the highly coordinated and detail-obsessed season 4 artist Mark Dion.

TwCA investigated the understated art of Robert Ryman and listened to him discuss his work live before writing the post, What Light? in February. Only a week later I came across a Scholastic Art magazine featuring five Art21 artists and was thrilled to see the periodical break free from it’s staple of Van Gogh, Cezanne and O’Keeffe. I love the artists, but don’t necessarily need classroom resources dedicated to them once a year. Working Without Warhol examined how Scholastic Art and other magazines like it can indeed incorporate contemporary art and artists meaningfully.

As spring began I was excited to share my work with students creating paintings driven by an investigation into what exactly is power? Power(ful) Painting highlighted the initial steps they took to create work about a big question and theme, which then allowed students to demonstrate skills they learned in previous lessons. Immediately following this unit, we made our way to the newly redesigned Museum of Art and Design to see Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. Classes were in the midst of changing gears and working with everyday materials to create works of art that were more than just another project about the principle of rhythm. Remixing. Transformation. highlighted the importance of this influential museum visit.

In April, the TwCA column began reporting on the work Art21 was doing with teachers at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies. The post Teaching with Film, Teaching with Objects was the first of these updates on the three-part workshop series titled Teaching and Learning with Contemporary Art, which concluded in May.

The spring also saw the Education and Public Programs team at Art21 travel to Minneapolis for the National Art Education Association’s annual conference, punctuated by our work at the Walker Art Center and with season 4 artist, Mark Bradford (see Burn Baby Burn). The conference itself provided many possibilities for the TwCA column, and I spent the following three weeks looking into questions posed at our panel discussion with Mark Bradford, Olivia Gude and William Crow. These questions are highlighted in the posts Getting Beyond, Authoritarian?, and Make Less Art.

It summer now. Time to relax and read. Two recent columns, Summer Reading Part 1 and Summer Reading Part 2, suggest a variety of works to inspire you as we get some collective distance from 2008-2009 and prepare for beginning all over again in September. Enjoy!

Talking with Students about Christian Marclay’s “Video Quartet”

Christian Marclay, still from "Video Quartet," 2002

With the opening of Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (on view through July 26, 2009), I have been thinking about how to share this 14-minute video work of art with students.

For educators, I think there is often a reluctance to discuss video art on tours. Sometimes there are logistical issues in terms of time and sequencing, while at other times, the narrative of the video poses challenges. However, works like Video Quartet—videos that can be watched for a portion of time and then discussed—offer possibilities for meaningful exchanges with students and exposure to this medium.

I developed some strategies to discuss Video Quartet after hearing a talk from educator Denise Gray. In regards to looking at video art with students, she emphasized a structured interaction, such that it includes time to experience the work, as well as the conditions in which to discuss it. The discussion portion sometimes requires you to step away from the work, or even outside of the gallery where it is being shown. These comments might be helpful for talking about video art by Art21 artists Matthew Barney, Pierre Huyghe, Mike Kelley, and Paul Pfeiffer.

Before entering the gallery showing Video Quartet, I introduce students briefly to what they will see: a collage of over 700 film clips of sounds edited together by the artist Christian Marclay to create a musical composition—a quartet. I mention that they will watch about five minutes of this 15-minute work. I also ask students to look for something specific: the various ways in which sounds are made, as well as how the image of the sound fits with the recorded sound.

A recent group of eighth graders, upon viewing part of Video Quartet, discussed “traditional music,” and how combined sounds—such as those made by car horns, feet tapping, and glasses filled with water—also create a type of music. The musical possibilities of car horns caused many of them to view the sound in new ways.

Marclay’s process to create Video Quartet was also something they wanted to discuss. While they were familiar with collage, seeing a collage made with video allowed them to think about repetition and arrangement in new ways. One student said how she thought the four screens was a really engaging choice, and another commented on how the clips on different screens competed for his attention. Through this work, Marclay also demonstrates an interest in the memory that viewers may have with some of these movies—which is something else that the students picked up on, recognizing films including Back to the Future and The Addams Family.

In addition to talking with students about this work, we plan to facilitate a drawing activity for summer K-12 tours where students draw the pattern of a sound or sounds they choose to focus on, creating an alternate image to accompany the sound and image pairing that Marclay produced. At our May Family Day, we also had stations where students could experiment with the mixing and editing process, creating their own song using an application called Super Duper Music Looper.

In our media-saturated lives, Christian Marclay reminds us to question the relationships that we are presented with—the sounds and images edited together for films. I also feel he encourages viewers to think creatively about ways in which they can change their role from being a consumer to being a producer.

Julie Thomson 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.

Summer Reading Part 2

Jenny Holzer, "WISH LIST BLACK," detail, 2006

Continuing with my column from May 27, I’d like to suggest a few more books related to contemporary art education that you may be inspired to buy, borrow or steal this summer (but please, steal from someone who has the book sitting on a shelf waiting to be opened, not from your local library!).

First, Julie Thompson’s suggestion to check out Paulo Freire’s Teachers as Cultural Workers - Letters to Those Who Dare Teach is an excellent one. Thank you, Julie! She also mentioned John Dewey’s Art as Experience, which is must reading if you haven’t already.

Other suggestions include:

Elliot Eisner’s The Arts and the Creation of Mind

Olivia Gude’s article, Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education (also a must!)

Anne-Celine Jaeger’s Image Makers, Image Takers: Interviews with Today’s Leading Curators, Editors and Photographers

Please continue to share your ideas for summer reading as we get closer to the official start of the season….

What’s “The End” Good For?

Raymond Pettibon, "No title (I must tell)", 2002

June can be a real catharsis of both the most beautiful and ugly kinds, but it doesn’t have to be a week-to-week whirlwind waiting for the next test. The last few weeks of the academic year are a chance to step up and possibly do a few things different, or daring, or even a little dangerous. Here are a few ideas we have recently tried:

• Ask students to work alone or in teams to create an installation. Install art in parts of the school that never see any art (What will the phys ed teacher think?).
• Have students select showcase portfolios- three or four examples from their entire body of work- and create a group exhibition with classmates. Again, think about installing exhibitions in  places that don’t usually feature art to get a different kind of attention.
• Ask alumni, who are usually around and available before summer jobs start in July, to come in and give an artist talk about their work since graduating. If they have portfolios to share, have them show students who will be entering their senior year, giving them food for thought as they begin planning to apply for undergraduate programs.

As I simultaneously get ready for the end of the school year and the opening of my own exhibition beginning this Friday, I’m also thinking about the fact that it’s time to take stock of what went well and what kinds of challenges I faced. It’s a perfect time to revise and update goals for the following year and get some good books together for the summer (more recommendations on the way!). Whatever you do, please don’t be one of those people who sits around and “counts” the days until “it’s over”… Do something different, or daring, or even a little dangerous.

Playing with Contemporary Art

Jessica Stockholder, "Red Tube + Two", 2005

Season 3 artist Jessica Stockholder states, “What kids do with play is a kind of learning and thinking. It is a kind of learning and thinking that doesn’t have a predetermined end. I think I am involved in that.” Stockholder has spent a career exploring how disparate materials go together. After viewing the segment on Stockholder, the first graders in my art class got to explore their own unique sensibilities and create a sculpture based on intuitive thinking.

Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute of Play, defines play as “a thing of beauty best appreciated by experiencing it.” This is what makes watching first graders explore the work and ideas of Jessica Stockholder so enjoyable. Just by setting out various materials (rubber bands, pipe-cleaners, tape, popsicle sticks, paperclips, straws), students can cheerfully and expressively create works while exploring the creative process. This type of innovation and creativity is what artists and art educators have been involved with for a long time It’s also the type of thinking that everyone from Daniel Pink to Apple to the Partnership for 21st Century Thinking Skills is talking about.

In a reflective class discussion upon completion of the sculptures, we examined what makes creating these works of art different from other ways of making sculpture. Most students responded to having fun while making the sculptures (6 and 7 year-olds tend to respond like this to most projects). Some responded excitedly about how they could easily take their sculpture apart and make something different. One student even pointed out how her sculpture included sound and motion. The idea of Play allows students to make artwork without the pressure of making Art.

Nate Morgan is an art teacher at the Hillside School in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and also serves on the Art21 National Education Advisory Council.

Summer Reading Part 1

Allora and Calzadilla- production still (2007).

As we get closer to rounding out another academic year, it’s probably a good time to think about some of the books that might make it onto our summer reading lists. While many might take detective or romance novels onto the beach, I am happy and at the same time embarrassed that I can’t get away from non-fiction. I find myself reading a lot about things that connect to teaching and art in general. I’m helpless… I love my work.

If you haven’t already got some good books on the radar, here are a few to consider as you begin getting ready for those first few sniffs of summer air… wherever you are…

Arthur Danto’s Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life (2005).

Jessica Hoffman Davis’ Framing Education As Art: The Octopus Has a Good Day (2005).

Maxine Greene’s Releasing the Imagination (1995).

Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind (2005).

Judith Olch Richards’ edited collection, Inside the Studio: Two Decades of Talks with Artists in New York (2004).

Kirk Varnedoe’s Pictures of Nothing (2006)

Please feel free to share your recommendations for inspiring reading related to teaching and contemporary art. More to come as we get closer to the official start of summer.

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Reality Hits at CCS Bard

Leaving Olafur Eliasson's "The Parliament of Reality" at Bard

In the final workshop of our three-part series at Bard College, titled “Teaching and Learning with Contemporary Art,” we were lucky enough to have Olafur Eliasson speak with us about making art and his new installation, The Parliament of Reality, created in collaboration with the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Bard Hessel Museum. Both inside the classroom where we initially met and then outside standing on the installation itself, teachers had a chance to start the final session with Mr. Eliasson’s thoughts about art and ideas, as well as take part in a dialogue about the considerations that go into creating installations like this one or the Waterfalls project in New York City last year.

The second half of the workshop focused on working with big ideas (rather than techniques) to drive units and lessons in the art classroom. After viewing works by Do-Ho Suh both on film and in the museum, and taking the opportunity to see how his stories and ideas about representation drive his work, we then had a chance to talk about how the workshop series itself could influence future curriculum planning. Our first workshop in March focused on teaching with objects and film. The second last month featured a session on media-based learning with CCS’s Ann Butler. It was now time to begin thinking about planning this summer and allowing our time together to influence the way we might go about things otherwise in September. We made a deal to come together at a fall preview screening for Art:21 Season 5 and at that time share our curriculum maps and plans for the new school year. In the meantime, the Education and Public Programs team here at Art21 is reflecting on our work at CCS Bard to influence a new project coming up this summer in New York City called Art21 Educators.

More to come!

Make Less Art

Alfredo Jaar, "Lament of the Images (Version 2)," 2002

At one point in my panel conversation with Olivia Gude, Mark Bradford, and William Crow at the National Art Education Association’s annual  conference in Minneapolis, the discussion got around to our hopes for the future of art education. Olivia Gude, in a way only she can truly communicate, actually hoped that students would “make less art” in the future. This week’s question from the NAEA conference (our last in a series of columns dedicated to questions from that panel, titled Art Practice, Teaching Practice) comes from Bobbi Meier, who teaches on the secondary level in River Forest, IL. Bobbi asked, “How do we make ‘less art’ and keep our program intact? Administrators are looking for product!”

As we move forward as artists and art educators, it’s important to make people understand (collectors, art lovers, students, parents, administrators, and policy makers) that quantity in an art program has little to do with quality. As a matter of fact, and I believe this is what Olivia was getting at, it’s important to allow students time for immersion into the themes, questions and big ideas that can drive significant units of study on all levels. While it’s not as glamorous to ditch the series of projects about “mastering” the elements of design in favor of a longer-term painting project that focuses on a big, essential question, there are ways for students to demonstrate understanding and even “mastery” of the elements through their work in a more significant unit that’s driven by a meaningful question(s) or idea.

Working with administrators to help them understand how and what our students are learning can go along way towards convincing them that the quantity is not what’s important. What’s important is listening to students describe, demonstrate, and write about their learning experiences in the art classroom, even when the product isn’t pretty or plentiful. Here are a few specific suggestions:

• Invite your principal or supervisor in to see a variety of lessons over time, not just when an observation or evaluation rolls around. It takes time to digest what we do with people who aren’t as experienced with the visual arts.
• Start a class webpage that communicates with the school community (including the school board) the themes and questions that drive units of study in your classroom. Share your curriculum maps (or, if necessary, START curriculum mapping and share your plans).
• Create or re-imagine a gallery or exhibit space in your school or district. Create a regular schedule of shows that allows teachers and students a chance to share a variety of work over time. Encourage students to share how that variety of work was inspired and how it relates with classmates, parents, community members, administrators and colleagues.

The first step, perhaps, to making less art is helping others understand what we do, and that what we do involves planning and thinking and shaping possibilities in order to come up with quality work in the classroom. While projects that focus on “mastering”elements or specific techniques can be cute and catchy, it doesn’t necessarily make for a quality art program. Everyone is always impressed with true learning. The challenge is to make that learning as exciting to share as the flashy projects that may not have as much thinking behind them.

Authoritarian?

Matthew Ritchie, "The Dead: Belphegor," 2004

As I mentioned last week, the Teaching with Contemporary Art column over the next few weeks will focus on questions generated at the recent NAEA conference in Minneapolis. This week’s question comes from Clyde Gaw from Indianapolis, who wrote, “Much of the teaching that takes place in art rooms today is authoritarian and actually restricts personal expression. Is this beneficial in any way?”

First of all, I do not agree that much of the teaching that takes place in art education classrooms is authoritarian. Mimicry can be a problem, but I can’t say that I’ve encountered many instances where the teaching could literally be called authoritarian. What I do find, as Olivia Gude pointed out in our Art Practice, Teaching Practice panel at the conference, is that many art educators are desperately clinging to old models of teaching from their childhood and/or teacher training. Using the elements and principles of design to drive a curriculum, for example, is simply not enough, and in some cases it’s misguided altogether.

Bringing contemporary art and artists into the classroom through the incorporation of Art21 education materials or sites like artbabble.org allows teachers to make important connections between the strengths in an existing curriculum and the gaps that curriculum faces. For example, taking ever-present artists like Andy Warhol or Alexander Calder and juxtaposing them with Margaret Kilgallen or Tim Hawkinson can teach more about all of the artists and ideas involved. What are the similarities between Warhol and Kilgallen? What do Calder and Hawkinson have in common and how is their work very different? What do Warhol and Kilgallen teach about working with popular culture? How do Calder and Hawkinson each attempt to redefine sculpture?

If, as Clyde points out, art education in your school or district leans towards an authoritarian model, then my suggestion might be to share (and model!) how contemporary art promotes choice, play, uncertainty, chance, undiscovered relationships, and new perspectives. Good teaching, much like contemporary art, has a lot to do with taking risks. Perhaps the first risk may be to push an existing curriculum into new territory.

This Week’s Round-Up

James Turrell Museum (Photo: Florian Holzherr)

• On April 22nd, the collector Donald Hess opened the world’s first James Turrell Museum in Colomé, Argentina. The 18,084sf space is based on a plan created by Turrell himself, and showcases nine light installations representing five decades of the Season 1 artist’s career.  All works on display are drawn from the Hess Art Collection, Bern, Switzerland, in which Turrell is represented with 22 pieces.

• The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts has announced the five recipients of the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts. They are Paul Chan, Rinde Eckert , John King, Reggie Wilson, and Season 2’s Paul Pfeiffer. Now in its 15th year, the $75,000 Award recognizes experimenters in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre, and visual arts.

• The New Yorkers opened last Friday at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen. As the press release states, the exhibition, like the Big Apple, is “difficult to map out.” The list of artists includes, among many, Agathe Snow, Peter Saul, Kostas Seremetis, Ryan Wallace, and Art21’s Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger.  The show runs through June 22nd.

• Season 4 artist Mark Dion lectures tonight at Portland State University, at the Shattuck Hall Annex. It’s at 7:30 and free!

• Oliver Herring’s solo exhibition Teens with Masks is up now through June 13 at Max Protetch.  The show includes a number of new photo-collage works by the Season 3 artist.