Milwaukee Art Museum Blog
As I am getting into the meat of my Art Education B.F.A. major at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I am finding more and more just how well my internship at the Milwaukee Art Museum compliments and contrasts with what I am learning academically.
How often do you really consider the implications of naming something? That is exactly what sixteen teens in the spring ArtWorks program here at the Museum did last Thursday. After looking closely at the artists and works of art in Accidental Genius: Art From the Anthony Petullo Collection, we worked together as a group to think deeply about the meanings of a name, how and why art is categorized, and whether or not such categories can ever really be correct.
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!
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:
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).
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.
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.