SCHOOL TALK: Promoting Arts Ed, In Museums and Classrooms
Last month I attended a professional development session at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It felt like playing hooky. Along with other parent coordinators, I listened to arts educators from the museum staff and from the Department of Education talk about the benefits of exposing children to art.
When Karen Felder, the head of arts education for the DOE, asked the group to think about their earliest experience with art, I recalled my visits to the Frick with my parents as a five or six year old, gazing awestruck at the enormous Fragonard paintings of little girls on swings in opulent gardens.
The purpose of this museum visit was to promote arts education but also to emphasize that because it sits on the property of the City of New York, the Metropolitan Museum is free for every one. The cost of admission is merely a suggestion; no one has to pay. This also holds true for the Brooklyn Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, El Museo del Barrio, and many others.
In the last fifteen years, museums all over the city have increased their programming for children and families. They understand that for their institutions to remain relevant, they cannot be bastions for educated New Yorkers; they had to become bastions of arts education.
The room where we met was at the end of a brightly-lit hallway, along which hung amazing examples of art created by the city’s public school students—from puppets by kindergartners to realistic self portraits by high school kids.
The artists represented were the winners of an annual contest co-sponsored by the Metropolitan and the DOE, and all public school art teachers are encouraged to enter artwork by their students.
Downtown schools have always embraced the arts, possibly because earlier residents of lower Manhattan tended to be artists or other creative types. While that is no longer the case, arts still abound, both in school and out.
Just take a look at the number of dance programs, music and art classes that are available in the neighborhood or a short subway ride away; even families who supplement school with tutors make sure that their children have time for a hip hop lesson or two.
In school, teachers of art, music, and dance are artists, musicians, and dancers themselves, and they bring passion and purpose to their classes. Cluster or enrichment teachers, as they are called in school jargon, work closely with classroom teachers to integrate the arts into curriculum. For instance, a 3rd grade study of the Brooklyn Bridge included making a bridge in the style of a Pointillism, and creating a dance in which students use their bodies to “build” bridges.
At the museum, we were asked to examine two artworks—a self-portrait by the great Jacob Lawrence, showing the artist at work in his studio, and a portrait by Marsden Hartley of a German officer, a collage of symbols and badges.
The question: would you rather be represented realistically or symbolically?
Conversation was rich and deeply personal, and the moderator closed with a reminder that using detail to support one’s response is a tenet of the Common Core standards.
I had another experience with arts education recently when I was exploring the Robert Gober retrospective at MOMA. In the final gallery sat a dollhouse made by the artist; building dollhouses and selling them was how he supported himself when he first moved to New York.
Suddenly, a group entered the room, adults and children carrying folding stools, which were opened and arranged around the dollhouse. It was an arts program for children with special needs.
Some of the children reached out to touch the dollhouse, and their parents had to hold them back. The instructor asked appropriate questions, with the intent of encouraging the children to look closely at how the object was made.
Did the founders of MOMA imagine that on a Sunday morning, the galleries would be filled with families pushing strollers and pointing out colors and shapes to their toddlers? It was three progressive women who saw the need for a museum devoted to modern art, different from the more traditional museums. If they were watching the group around Gober’s dollhouse, I think they would be very pleased.
Connie Schraft is the parent coordinator at P.S. 89. For questions and comments, write to her at connie@tribecatrib.com.