Category: Education

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Education

Teens and Art: An Intern’s Experience

Gabby made pies inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's "Refrigerator Pies."
Gabby made pies inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's "Refrigerator Pies."

This past semester, I was fortunate enough to have a talented, dedicated art education student named Jessica Janzer interning as a teaching assistant for the Satellite High School Program. Jessica worked hard every Thursday and Friday on all of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating a program, and also taught one of the sessions. As part of her internship, she wrote the below blog post reflecting on the program. I’m thrilled that Jessica will continue to intern with me in the spring semester, too! –Chelsea Kelly, School & Teacher Programs Manager

The Milwaukee Art Museum. To most, the Museum is a beautiful and almost untouchable place – a place of high class and good taste, and of course, it is also Milwaukee’s most attractive asset. When I saw an internship opening there, I promptly jumped on the opportunity. The fact that I would be working at the Museum excited me, but I was intrigued even further when I learned it would be in the Education Department!

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Education

How We Made the Museum’s Teacher Website

Screenshot of the new Teacher Resources site.
Screenshot of the new Teacher Resources site.
Screenshot of the new Teacher Resources site.

Have you ever made a website? It’s not easy these days. Especially if you want it to be robust, web-standards-friendly, functional, and beautiful. Luckily, the Museum has a fabulous web team in our Communications department that assists with all the various whims and wishes of the rest of the staff. These two busy staff members—that’s right, there’s only two of them!—work hard every day to make our website look great and work well.

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Education

On Tim Gunn and Gallery Teaching

Georgia O’Keeffe, Blue B, 1959. Oil on canvas. Milwaukee Art Museum. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. Photo credit Larry Sanders. ©2010 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Blue B, 1959 (detail). Oil on canvas. Milwaukee Art Museum. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. Photo credit Larry Sanders. ©2010 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

A few weeks ago, I walked home from work at around 7 PM. The city was already dark and the lights of the office buildings were still sparkling, and I was still thinking about my teens in the Satellite program. We had talked about the work of Georgia O’Keeffe that day and our hour-long conversation about her work had been rich and layered. We asked questions of Georgia, of ourselves, of art in general:

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Education

Hip-Hop in the Galleries, Inspired by Art

Dwight and Marquis Gilbert demo music-making in front of Jim Campbell, Jim Campbell, Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio, 2010. LEDs, wire, custom electronics. Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Art Society. © Jim Campbell. Photo by the author

Scratching, turntables, bass, melodies, rhythm. Not exactly vocabulary you’re used to hearing about in an art museum, is it? In an experiment with H2O Milwaukee Music/the Peace Propaganda Project, an urban music education organization, we put teens, music educators, and video art all together in a gallery to see what would happen.

The mission: Create an original piece of music inspired by Jim Campbell’s Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio (2010).

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Education

The Bus Unveiled: Art Xpress 2011

Photo by Mark Hines

I promised you an unveiling of the bus mural created entirely by City of Milwaukee teens. Here it is!

Fourteen of the city’s young artists came together for three weeks over the summer to create a mural that used the themes and symbols from the Museum’s Summer of CHINA exhibitions to inspire a bus mural positively addressing an issue in the Milwaukee community.

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Behind the Scenes Education

Download the Kohl’s Art Generation iPod Touch App!

I am so excited to announce that the Kohl’s Art Generation Family iPod Touch Tour is now a free, downloadable app from the iTunes store!

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Behind the Scenes Education

Help Harmony Blossom: Art Xpress 2011

Araceli puts finishing touches on her panel for the mural
Araceli puts finishing touches on her panel for the mural.

This summer, fourteen teens from all around the Milwaukee area came together for three packed weeks with a hefty task: to create a mural for the side of a Milwaukee County Transit System bus that would address an important issue in the community, inspired by themes in the Museum’s The Emperor’s Private Paradise exhibition of Chinese art.

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Behind the Scenes Education Exhibitions

How We’re Getting Ready for the “Summer of CHINA”

Zhan Wang, Artificial Rock No. 43, 2008. Stainless steel. Private collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Long March Space, Beijing. This work is in the “On Site: Zhan Wang” exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum this summer.

When one exhibition closes, another always opens.

While I’m bummed that Frank (are we allowed to be on a first-name basis after my exhibition Express Talks and school tours?) is leaving the Museum after May 15, I am so excited for the epic series of upcoming exhibitions included in the Summer of CHINA!

You might have heard about this endeavor: the Museum will have no less than five—five!—exhibitions that feature thousands of years of Chinese art, all in one place here at the Museum (you can read all about them in the press release). Right now, as I’m studying The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City exhibition catalog, I thought I’d give you all a sneak peek as to some of the things that happen around here before an exhibition opens to the public. Warning: This post might exhaust you! We get pretty busy…

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Art Education

Slow Art: Bouguereau’s Homer and His Guide

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905), Homer and His Guide, 1874 (detail). Oil on canvas. Milwaukee Art Museum, Layton Art Collection, Gift of Frederick Layton. Photo credit Larry Sanders
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905), Homer and His Guide, 1874 (detail). Oil on canvas. Milwaukee Art Museum, Layton Art Collection, Gift of Frederick Layton. Photo credit Larry Sanders

It was easier to begin my 45-minute looking experience at William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Homer and His Guide than it was at Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park, the subject of my last “Slow Art” post. I have loved Bouguereau for about four years now, ever since I gave gallery talks on his work at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, PA. Like Jean-Honoré Fragonard, he is not the most respectable artist for an art historian or museum educator to love: his work is sentimental, it doesn’t really push boundaries, and it is on the whole pretty safe. But I have always been drawn to the way he paints—his style is luminously realistic, ridiculously meticulous. He is one of the few painters whose figures always seem to me about to jump off the canvas.

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Art Education

Slow Art: Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street at Schöneberg City Park, 1912-13 (detail). Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. Photo credit Larry Sanders
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street at Schöneberg City Park, 1912-13. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. Photo credit Larry Sanders

Have you ever looked at a work of art for a half-hour straight?

In college, one of my favorite art history professors required that we spend at least a half-hour sitting in front of the work of art we were researching and sketch it, getting intimate with the figures, setting, lines and brushstrokes within it, and immersing ourselves in the choices the artist made. While looking for forty-five minutes at Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park, that was exactly what I did.

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