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Education

Teens Discuss Michelle Erickson’s Texas Tea Party

Michelle Erickson, Texas Tea Party, 2005. Chipstone Foundation, Photo by Gavin Ashworth.
Michelle Erickson, Texas Tea Party, 2005. Chipstone Foundation, Photo by Gavin Ashworth.
Detail of Michelle Erickson, Texas Tea Party, 2005. Chipstone Foundation, Photo by Chelsea Emelie Kelly.

At the end of February, teens in the Satellite High School Program gathered around Michelle Erickson’s Texas Tea Party (2005). They’ll study this object for the whole semester, using different methods of looking to form their own interpretations. For their first session, we spent one full hour looking closely at the work and having an open-ended dialogue about what we saw, the artist’s intent, and what it all might mean.

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Behind the Scenes Education

Meet Jesús: Artist, Teen Program Alum, and Scholastic Award Winner

Jesus Hilario at the 2013 ArtXpress opening reception. Photo by Front Room Photography
Jesus Hilario at the 2013 ArtXpress opening reception. Photo by Front Room Photography
Jesus Hilario at the 2013 ArtXpress opening reception. Photo by Front Room Photography

The Museum has offered teen programs that change the lives of young people for over thirty years. I’m thrilled to feature an interview with one program alum, Jesús Hilario, who is a senior in high school at Rufus King High School in Milwaukee. Jesús was an intern in the Museum’s ArtXpress high school program in 2013, and is a recent multi-award winner for the national Scholastic Art Awards, on view at the Museum through March 22. ArtXpress is a summer studio internship program for teens, who take inspiration from the Museum’s feature exhibition to create a mural that positively addresses a community issue and is displayed for a year as an advertisement on a Milwaukee County public bus. The Scholastic Art Awards is a national program that has encouraged the artistic endeavors of young people throughout the United States for over eighty-five years.

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Behind the Scenes Education

Teens on Museums, Relevancy, and Community: Part 4

Group hug. Photo by Front Room Photography

It’s my pleasure to share the work of the teen interns in this semester’s Satellite High School Program. Fifteen students from all around Milwaukee spent a semester exploring and discussing art, touring elementary school students, going behind the scenes, speaking to staff, and learning about career skills. Then, the teens created final projects expressing how art can be made relevant to our lives today and how the Milwaukee Art Museum can be an icon for the city, inside and out. This post, part 4 of 4, showcases the work of these students in their own words.

The final group of students created works out of many different kinds of media for their final projects.

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Behind the Scenes Education

Teens on Museums, Relevancy, and Community: Part 3

A view of the final celebration in progress. Photo by Front Room Photography

It’s my pleasure to share the work of the teen interns in this semester’s Satellite High School Program. Fifteen students from all around Milwaukee spent a semester exploring and discussing art, touring elementary school students, going behind the scenes, speaking to staff, and learning about career skills. Then, the teens created final projects expressing how art can be made relevant to our lives today and how the Milwaukee Art Museum can be an icon for the city, inside and out. This post, part 3 of 4, showcases the work of these students in their own words.

Categories
Behind the Scenes Education

Teens on Museums, Relevancy, and Community: Part 2

A view of the final celebration in progress. Photo by Front Room Photography

It’s my pleasure to share the work of the teen interns in this semesterrsquo;s Satellite High School Program. Fifteen students from all around Milwaukee spent a semester exploring and discussing art, touring elementary school students, going behind the scenes, speaking to staff, and learning about career skills. Then, the teens created final projects expressing how art can be made relevant to our lives today and how the Milwaukee Art Museum can be an icon for the city, inside and out. This post, part 2 of 4, showcases the work of these students in their own words.

Categories
Behind the Scenes Education

Teens on Museums, Relevancy, and Community: Part 1

The Satellite High School Program interns, Fall 2014. Photo by Front Room Photography

It’s my pleasure to share the work of the teen interns in this semester’s Satellite High School Program. Fifteen students from all around Milwaukee spent a semester exploring and discussing art, touring elementary school students, going behind the scenes, speaking to staff, and learning about career skills. Then, the teens created final projects expressing how art can be made relevant to our lives today and how the Milwaukee Art Museum can be an icon for the city, inside and out. This post, part 1 of 4, showcases the work of these students in their own words.

Categories
Art Education

Teen Voices in the Museum

Milwaukee Art Museum Satellite Program group, 2013-14

Teen programs provide a very different kind of opportunity for museums to experiment with interpretation. Because many teens participate in multiple programs for extended lengths of time, they become advocates and resources for our museums and collections. Here at the Milwaukee Art Museum, I’ve been experimenting with interpretation strategies that go deeper than one-day-only programs, providing not only learning experiences for students involved, but powerful tools and content for the Museum, too.

Categories
Education

How to Engage Teens at the Museum

Helena discusses Fragonard’s “The Shepherdess” in the Milwaukee Art Museum galleries. Photo by Nate Pyper

How do art museums engage teenagers? We offer a number of internships at the Milwaukee Art Museum for teens, but for most students, their first (and sometimes only) exposure to the Museum is through a school field trip. In collaboration with our docent corps, we asked the students themselves how to engage teenagers in the galleries.

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Behind the Scenes Education

ArtXpress Teen Program: ONE-MKE

Group shot of the ArtXpress teens with their mural! Photo by Front Room Photography
Group shot of the ArtXpress teens with their mural! Photo by Front Room Photography
How does one respond to a show like 30 Americans, which raises so many contemporary issues about identity, place and culture? How does this exhibition fit into a city that at first glance is all about motorcycles, baseball, and beer? Teens in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s ArtXpress program tackled these questions this summer.

Categories
Education

Teen Voice: Victoria–The Museum’s Impact on Milwaukee

Victoria and her castle in the Kohl's Art Generation Gallery. Photo by Emerald Summers
Victoria and her castle in the Kohl’s Art Generation Gallery. Photo by Emerald Summers
The first time I saw the Milwaukee Art Museum I was in awe. The huge wings and the stark white building against the lake made the Museum seem like a weird foreign castle that I wanted to explore and get lost in. When I got inside, I was suddenly intimidated as I realized I couldn’t lay my grubby first grade fingers on anything! It was probably one of the biggest let downs in my first grade life I had ever encountered, but now, coming back as a senior in high school (and knowing about artwork conservation), I know it was for a good reason.

Four weeks ago I had no idea that I would be creating a post that would be viewed by anyone who accessed Milwaukee Art Museum Blog. When I first started the internship I was ecstatic: Working at the art museum? I was movin’ on up in life. Then when I found out I was going to create a blog post, you could pretty much say my day–if not year–was made.