Tag: Museum education
This is the sixth in a series of blog posts highlighting a variety of different positions within the Milwaukee Art Museum. Each day, hundreds of visitors enter the Milwaukee Art Museum to stare in awe at the incredible wealth of artworks within the museum’s collection. But what can too often go unrecognized is the equally awe-inspiring work of the many museum staff members, without whom the museum in its current state could not exist. “MAM Behind the Scenes” is a blog series written by Digital Learning intern Emma Fallone to showcase the wide range of positions that make up a museum, and to reveal just a few of the many people whose work makes the Milwaukee Art Museum a source of inspiration and education.
Can you give a brief description of your job, in thirty seconds or less?
I have a very far-reaching job. The great thing about my work is that in the course of one day, I can be working with kindergartners, adults, and everyone in-between. I can go from the sublime to the ridiculous in a heartbeat! I can be both serious and playful about art within a very short time, which I love. The range of my job responsibilities encompasses everything from strategic planning to teaching children. And, despite my many administrative tasks, I always try to maintain some creative projects, such as developing the education gallery or spending some time teaching tour groups, to make sure that I remain engaged and energized.
This coming year will be my third year as Chelsea’s intern, so I’ve definitely come to know my way around the Art Museum and its many programs. I work with Chelsea mostly with the Satellite High School Internship Program, thus I was thrilled to have a hand in some of the prepping and planning for the spring term.
Prior to the start of the spring semester, Chelsea and I did some program brainstorming for the Satellite Program. Most of our conversation was about what the final project would look like for the students. Read more to find out more about the teaching process and view the students’ final project videos!
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Teens and Art: An Intern’s Experience
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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On Tim Gunn and Gallery Teaching
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:
Why do we have art in our lives? What are the intentions of artists? Even when they write down what they were up to, is it okay to disagree with what they say about their work, or should that be where we stop? What role does our personal interpretation play in a work of art? What happens when artists give up their work to the world? And after they do so can (or should) they have a say over how people feel about it?
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).
First, we took 15 minutes to look closely at the piece, which is made up of many small LED lights programmed to blink at certain intervals, creating an unusual video installation (see video below). Teens immediately centered in on one of Campbell’s primary interests: visually representing peripheral vision. Then, with an array of equipment–turntables, laptops, keyboards, subwoofers, speakers–we set about creating a piece of music inspired by the look, mood, and rhythm of Campbell’s piece.
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.
That’s right: these teens, pretty much all on their own, had to design a bus mural that included a thought-provoking slogan, a high quality work of public art, and which, as a whole, positively encouraged a viewer to consider how we can improve our city. When I bragged about these teens and their work to my friends, family, and colleagues, I got some raised eyebrows. No one asked, but I could see it in their eyes:
Fourteen people all work together on a project like this? On a public art piece that would be displayed for an entire year?
How could adults accomplish that, they seemed to say, let alone teens?