18th-Century Art for the 21st-Century Classroom -1

18th-Century Art for the 21st-Century Classroom -1

 

Students are often lectured at, asked to receive information and not question what is being said. As a college student, I’ve experienced this first-hand.

 

This summer, I got to explore more creative approaches to learning as part of the team planning the annual alumni event for teacher graduates of the Museum Education Department’s one-year professional development program, Art & Language Arts. This program introduces K-5 teachers to innovative approaches to fostering visual and language arts learning in the classroom. This year’s theme was “Creativity and Innovation,” and the goal was to help teachers generate and utilize out-of-the-box approaches to teaching art, learning from art, and making art.

 

The morning of the alumni event, held August 11, was packed with lectures and an activity from our keynote speakers, artist Mark Bradford and poet Douglas Kearney, who talked about their artistic practices and shared their thoughts on classroom learning. Bradford advocated for encouraging students to understand that art comes from all around us—it doesn’t necessarily need to be “on top of the hill.” In fact, he said, “everything [we] see is art.”

 

Following Bradford’s presentation, Kearney performed some of his own poetry and led an interactive multisensory poetry activity prompting teachers to write poetry inspired by artworks in the Getty Museum’s collection—and to get them to think of poetry as more than haiku.

 

The afternoon included four sessions with gallery activities and art-making workshops. I created an activity that invited participants to think about their identity and that fostered choice and play. In this two-part workshop, titled “Appropriate and Innovate: Decorative Arts for Contemporary Times,” we began by looking closely at the forms and functions of furniture pieces in the Rococo paneled room. Through close looking, we discovered who the owner might have been: a wealthy Parisian nobleman, possibly well-traveled and interested in showcasing his exotic displays of world cultures as signified by a commode, four-panel screen, pair of globes, and elephant figurine. And he probably kept his files top secret, as seen in the three different tables with locks and secret compartments. By taking the time to observe closely, curiosity led us to insightful ideas and conclusions.

 

from: getty.edu