Whitney Museum of American Art: Blogs: EducationBlog

WECAN: Whitney Education Creates a New Neighborhood Network

Whitney Museum of American Art — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:44:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

As Education staff look ahead to the opening of the Whitney’s new building in the Meatpacking District in 2015, we are beginning the exciting process of reaching out to our future community. Following dozens of exploratory conversations with local stakeholders, we hosted the first official meeting of the Whitney Education Community Advisory Network (WECAN) on April 26. WECAN is a group of local residents, teachers, parents, and representatives from social service providers and community based organizations in the Whitney’s future neighborhood in downtown Manhattan. Through the creation of WECAN, we are seeking to involve our neighbors in an ongoing dialogue exploring ways that the Whitney can become an essential resource for this diverse and dynamic community. In the coming years, the network will meet bimonthly to engage in a series of conversations about the Whitney’s role in the new neighborhood and our educational programming.

Joanna Malinowska: Fieldwork

Whitney Museum of American Art — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:48:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

Engaging with painting, sculpture, performance, and video, the diverse projects of Joanna Malinowska are often inspired by her interest in cultural anthropology. On April 13, Public Programs invited Malinowska to construct an evening of discussion and demonstration that further explored key aspects of her contributions to the Biennial 2012 exhibition. In an event she titled Fieldwork, Malinowska recruited the Hungry March Band to stage a convergence of two groups of musicians playing stylistically different music. Malinowska cites the experimental music of Charles Ives as an inspiration for her project. Ives typically integrated many diverse musical traditions and styles into a single composition. One group started in the Sculpture Court, the other on the sidewalk in front of the Museum. A lively cacophony permeated the galleries as they marched around and towards one another, culminating in a “collision” in the Lower Gallery.

The work Malinoswka created for the Biennial is just as multifaceted as the evening she curated: both incorporate a wide range of media and artistic references. Her sculpture From the Canyons to the Stars (2012), refers to Marcel Duchamp’s work Bottle Rack (1914). In the early twentieth-century, Duchamp famously presented this functional object as art and created the world’s first readymade. While Malinowska intentionally mimics the spiked cylindrical shape of this icon of modernism in her work, she abandons the original metal medium for replicas of the tusks of walruses and mammoths native to the Arctic region. The object, then, alludes to both the culture of Western modern art and the totems and rituals of of indigenous cultural traditions. Malinowska, however, privileges neither reference over the other, as it is their juxtaposition—the integration of seemingly incongruous cultural references into a single piece—that ultimately interests her. Will these diverse elements produce only chaos and noise or will they unexpectedly complement one another to create something beautiful?

Teen Art Workshop with Elaine Reichek

Whitney Museum of American Art — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:56:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

Not many people can effectively explain Titian, T. S. Eliot, and tapestries to an audience of teenagers on a Friday night, but Biennial 2012 artist Elaine Reichek has that gift, plainly evident as she led a workshop for the Whitney’s Youth Insights (YI) participants on March 30. Part discussion, part art class, Reichek focused on her work from her ongoing series Ariadne’s Thread.

Whitney Studio

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:20:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

Education is delighted to announce the opening of the Whitney Studio, a new education space conceived in collaboration with the New York-based architecture firm LOT-EK (pronounced “low-tech”). Installed in the Sculpture Court near the entrance to the Museum, the structure brings new visibility to the Whitney’s education programs. “We really do put education front and center,” said Museum director Adam D. Weinberg, in a recent New York Times article that featured the project.

Coins in the Concrete

Whitney Museum of American Art — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:12:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

On April 5, 2012, Museum director Adam Weinberg, Whitney senior staff, and the new building team gathered for an informal ceremony to commemorate the pouring of the concrete foundation for the Whitney’s new building in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

NAEA Conference 2012

Whitney Museum of American Art — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:50:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

The 2012 National Art Education Association (NAEA) annual conference was held in New York from February 29−March 4. The conference brings together artists and arts educators from around the country, offering a forum for the exchange of ideas as well as numerous opportunities for professional development, with the ultimate goal of improving visual arts instruction in American schools and museums. Several members of the Whitney Education staff gave presentations and organized workshops for colleagues from around the country. Participation at these professional conferences keeps Whitney staff apprised of new developments and best practices and establishes Whitney Education as a national leader in the field.

Nicole Eisenman: Figure Drawing "Atelier"

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:52:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

On Friday, March 16, Biennial artist Nicole Eisenman hosted a figure drawing workshop in the Whitney’s Lower Gallery. In conjunction with Biennial 2012, the Museum’s public programs staff asked five exhibiting artists to create unique evenings of performance, discussion, demonstration, and engagement to explore the key aspects of their practice and vision that defined their unique contributions to this exhibition. Mirroring the activity depicted in her work The Drawing Class (2011), Eisenman decided to introduce live nude models into the Museum’s galleries and lead an academic drawing class. As Eisenman’s own work is similarly rooted in figurative representation, she and her artist friends host similar gatherings to act as models for one another. A meticulous draftsman, she combines historical elements of painting—from Impressionism to modern art—with elements of popular culture. Her work often conveys her interest in the emotions of the human condition, exploring moments of isolation and detachment even in instances of lively social interaction.

Teen Programs Alumni Research Project: First Researcher-Practitioner Institute, December 2011

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:28:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

In October 2011, the Whitney’s Education department announced its partnership with MOCA, the Walker Art Center, and CAMH, to undertake a collaborative research initiative over the next three years.This study will focus on four long-running programs that engage teens in contemporary art museums, and seeks to document the enduring effects of these programs on the participants, their communities, and the museums themselves. This project is funded by a National Leadership grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. Surprisingly little formal research has been conducted to understand and substantiate the long-term impact of intensive educational experiences for adolescents in the arts. In December 2011, representatives from each institution met in New York for the first of their six Practitioner-Researcher Institutes. Led by a research advisor, Mary Ellen Munley of MEM & Associates, the team exchanged ideas and charted their research objectives at this introductory conference.

Stroller Tour: _Real/Surreal_

Whitney Museum of American Art — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:58:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

On Friday, February 3, there was a lot of lively chaos in the Whitney’s second-floor galleries as babies and their parents participated in a Stroller Tour of the exhibition Real/Surreal. The Stroller Tour program invites parents to socialize and enjoy guided tours of current exhibitions at times when the Museum is closed to the public. As new moms and dads learned about the relationships between the observable world and the surreal in American art of the 1920s-1940s, the babies relaxed and took in the unfamiliar sight of the works on view.

Art School: Interpreting Sculpture

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:03:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

In January, Art School participants explored the exhibitions David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy and SHERRIE LEVINE: MAYHEM over three sessions. Art School is a studio-based course that aims to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to trends in contemporary art, and to expand their ideas about what art can be. This month’s program introduced the participants to the complex issues of authorship and originality in Sherrie Levine’s work. During the three-week program, they discussed the works on view in the galleries, experimented with materials, and learned new techniques.

Teacher Exchange: Singular Visions and New Horizons

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:40:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

We began a fascinating Teacher Exchange meeting in January 2012 with a guided tour of the exhibition, Singular Visions. The twelve works on view, drawn from the Whitney’s collection, are each installed in their own space, creating intimate and compelling encounters with single works of art.

Artist, Critic, Canon: Art History, After Levine

Whitney Museum of American Art — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:14:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

On December 15, 2011, in conjunction with the exhibition SHERRIE LEVINE: MAYHEM, art historian David Joselit and artist Zoe Leonard joined curator Elisabeth Sussman to discuss how Levine and other artists of her generation altered the way images are distributed, studied, and understood. From theoretical shifts to fundamental changes in the way artists borrow, reframe, and reproduce imagery, the panelists investigated Levine’s work and its influence on the practice and theory of contemporary art.

Both Joselit and Leonard recalled how Levine’s radical approach to image-making profoundly affected and challenged them in the 1980s, when she first began to re-photograph and re-purpose artwork, and to question accepted notions of authorship, originality, and ownership. Her provocation, they agree, still resonates today, as she produces objects that are, in Joselit’s words, “extremely ahead of their moment.”

The exhibition inspired Leonard to consider the relationship of her own work to Levine’s. She believes they share common interest in the relationship between image and object. Stating she wants her work to: “reconcile or sort of dig into the space between the [three] dimensions and the relationship between photography and sculpture and show how a print is an object in space,” Leonard sees a similar blurring of the distinction between the second and third dimensions in a work like After Courbet 1-18 (2009). Here Levine frames and assembles eighteen reproductions of Courbet’s famous painting, The Origin of the World (1866). The simple plywood frames that surround each image reinforce the physicality of each component, yet they exist simultaneously as images in a two-dimensional form. Leonard also employs a parallel use of repetition in works such as You see I am here after all (2008), an installation consisting of approximately 4,000 postcards that all depict Niagara Falls.

Teacher Exchange: A Meeting in Real/Surreal

Whitney Museum of American Art — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:50:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

Our Teacher Exchange meeting in early December focused on the exhibition, Real/Surreal. Through paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, the exhibition revealed the fascinating tension and overlap between the real observable world, and that of the imaginary and subconscious. During the meeting, we explored how various gallery-based activities can encourage students to look more closely at a work and dig deeper into the artists’ ideas, materials, and processes. We also discussed the ways that these non-discursive strategies support differentiated learning among students with diverse needs.

The Vlog Project Wins 2011 International Jodi Commendation

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:49:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

The Whitney’s ASL Vlog Project was the recipient of a Commendation for Sustainable Growth in the International Jodi Awards for Accessible Digital Culture. Each year, the Jodi Mattes Trust reviews nominated projects from around the globe to celebrate museums, galleries, libraries, and other heritage institutions that use digital technology to provide improved access to information, collections, learning, and creativity for people with disabilities. The Whitney is thrilled to be recognized this year with a commendation.

The award was presented on December 8, 2011 at the Digital Strategies for Heritage Conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I traveled to accept the award in front of an audience of nearly 500 museum and heritage specialists, and had the pleasure of seeing one of our videos screened for the entire assembly. In addition, I was invited to present information about the project as part of a panel presentation on Inclusive Digital Heritage in the Twenty-first Century. It was an excellent opportunity to share our work and learn from colleagues abroad who are also working to expand access in the digital realm.

Teacher Exchange: A Discussion about the Role of Information in Inquiry-Based Learning

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:02:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

Can we know too much about a work of art? Do biographical details and historical information get in the way of our personal and imaginative responses to an artist’s creation? The focus of our second meeting for Teacher Exchange in early November was to consider the role that information plays in inquiry-based learning. Teacher Exchange is a year-long professional development workshop for K-12 teachers to learn from one another and exchange ideas about art and teaching.

Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture: Claes Oldenburg

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:54:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

On November 1, 2011, at the seventh Walter Annenberg Annual Lecture, the Whitney honored Claes Oldenburg for his achievements and contributions to the field of American art and culture. In his public conversation with Museum Director Adam Weinberg, Oldenburg reflected on his career, revealing a sensibility that—much like his monumental sculptures—combines humor and earnestness.

Oldenburg offered fascinating stories about his own development as an artist, beginning with his days as a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago. He explained that, after “copying” the masters from Pablo Picasso to Willem de Kooning, he felt ready to move to New York and create his own art work based “on intuition” rather than imitation.

In his studio on the Lower East Side, Oldenburg found inspiration in the stores, objects, and consumer goods that surrounded him. He created one of his first major installations, The Store, by sculpting everyday objects and installing them in his studio as if for sale. He explained that he sought to “convert [his] studio into a situation that fit into the surroundings.” This consideration of place turned out to be the driving force behind much of Oldenburg’s career, from his performance pieces, to soft vinyl sculpture and large-scale, public projects.

Desert Island Comic Zine Party

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:54:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

At the Desert Island Comic Zine Party on October 15, 2011, kids and adults delved into comics old and new. To celebrate the end of the exhibition Lyonel Feininger: City at the Edge of the World, Whitney Family Programs partnered with Desert Island, an independent comic shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After discovering Feininger’s pioneering comic strips in the galleries, families had a chance to meet contemporary illustrators and comic book artists.

Whitney Docents Visit Storm King Art Center

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:13:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

Inspired by the works in the exhibition David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy, now on view at the Museum, the Whitney docents decided to take a trip to see some Smith sculptures in another light—literally! About an hour and a half north of the city at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY, we had the opportunity to see Smith’s sculptures in the outdoor landscape setting that the artist cherished. Even with Storm King’s prized Cubi XXI (1964) presently on loan to the Whitney for the show, the works on view provided another perspective on thinking about Smith’s range of work.

Teacher Exchange 2011-2012: First Meeting

Whitney Museum of American Art — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:44:00 -0500

Categories: EducationBlog

One of the perks associated with teaching K-12 students in New York City is the endless array of creative resources available for both personal and professional inspiration. Conversely, one of the challenges K-12 teachers confront is finding the right times and the most amenable places to nurture our imagination. This is why the Whitney’s Teacher Exchange, a year-long professional development program for K-12 teachers, is such an exciting opportunity for those of us who want to explore new ways of teaching and sharing ideas.

For our first meeting in early October, eleven of us gathered in the Whitney’s lobby to begin our monthly exploration of the Museum’s collection and to collaborate as educators, artists, and explorers. Over a cup of warm coffee and healthy snacks, we learned about one another’s backgrounds, subject areas, and the schools where we teach. With the help of the Whitney’s eager team of educators, it took very little time for us to feel a sense of connection to the whole group.

Youth Insights looks to the future with a long-term research project

Whitney Museum of American Art — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:00:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

The Whitney’s Education Department is thrilled to announce a new national research initiative to explore the long-term impact of teen programs in modern and contemporary art museums, including its award-winning Youth Insights program. With a generous National Leadership Grant awarded by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Whitney will lead a three-year project in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (LA MOCA). All four institutions offer teen programs that have been in existence for more than a decade and provide a diverse group of participants the opportunity to learn about art, go behind the scenes at each institution, and take on leadership roles within the museum and in their community.

Pro Tools with Cory Arcangel

Whitney Museum of American Art — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:52:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

Brooklyn-based artist Cory Arcangel explores the intersection of technology, Internet culture, and art. His work ranges from drawings and photographs to sculpture and video. On September 10, 2011, families engaged with the artist and his exhibition, Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools, through gallery activities, art projects, and digital technology.

Museum educators led activities that took both digital and analog approaches to Arcangel’s recent work. Upon entering one gallery, kids marveled at the large, high-quality prints that comprise his Photoshop Gradient Demonstration series, and were even more surprised when they found out how they were made. Using the image processing software Photoshop, the artist selected stock color gradients and randomly clicked across the computer screen. The titles of the resulting brilliantly-colored images function almost like instructions for how Arcangel made each photograph, listing the document size, type of gradient, and coordinate points of the mouse clicks. Families used laptop computers and Photoshop to follow these instructions and replicate Arcangel’s gradients. Afterwards, families tried their hand at making gradients with more traditional art materials—paper and colored pencil.

Title TK Meets Danny Goldberg

Whitney Museum of American Art — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:00:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

On August 10, as part of the My Turn public program series, artist Cory Arcangel along with his Title TK band mates Alan Licht and Howie Chen, chatted with record exec and music industry mainstay Danny Goldberg about working with some of the best known bands in the business. Title TK is a self-proclaimed “banter-prone” band that produces more humorous musings than music, while Danny Goldberg is known for his work as record company president, public relations man, journalist, and band manager. Although Title TK rarely plays their instruments in public, and Goldberg proclaims that he has never been a musician, the speakers all share considerable knowledge of—and reverence for—Rock and Roll’s musical geniuses.

The Fine Art Of Comics

Whitney Museum of American Art — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:29:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

Comic fans flocked to the Whitney on July 20 for a panel discussion featuring graphic artists Gary Panter, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. “The Fine Art of Comics,” a discussion about the intersections of comics and fine art, was moderated by John Carlin. This program was held in conjunction with the exhibition Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World, on view through October 16, 2011. Feininger began his career as an artist by drawing comic strips for the Chicago Sunday Tribune and some of his comics, including “The Kin-der-Kids” and “Wee Willie Winkie’s World,” appear in the exhibition. The topic proved to be particularly relevant as Panter, Spiegelman, and Ware discussed how art school, museums, and criticism shaped their careers.

Connecting Collections: Integrating Modern and Contemporary Art into the Classroom

Whitney Museum of American Art — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:13:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

During the week of July 11-15, thirty-nine teachers from around the world gathered together to collaborate and learn about integrating art into the classroom. Since 2003, the Whitney has been part of Connecting Collections, a week-long summer institute in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The goals of this professional development seminar are to deepen teachers’ understanding of contemporary and modern art, introduce object- and inquiry-based teaching strategies, and develop engaging approaches for using works of art in the classroom. The 3rd to 12th grade teachers spent a day at each of the four museums where they participated in guided gallery talks, discussions, and hands-on activities. They also attended seminars in which participants worked together in small groups to create a lesson plan for their classrooms.

Whitney on Site: _Ascension_

Whitney Museum of American Art — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:15:00 -0400

Categories: EducationBlog

On July 7, 8, and 9, noted choreographer, Elizabeth Streb transformed a quiet plaza in the Meatpacking District into a fantastic exploration of acrobatics, dance, and performance. The work, titled Ascension, involved nine dancers from the Streb Extreme Action Company, interacting with a twenty-one foot spinning ladder. Ascension was commissioned as part of the ongoing series Whitney on Site: New Commissions Downtown. This series activates the urban space near the future museum site with unique cultural and artistic endeavors. It continues the Whitney Museum’s long tradition of supporting artists and their audiences.

Streb’s piece showcased both the physical and mental strength of the dancers who jumped on and flipped off the ladder in singles, pairs, and groups. Though the audience could feel their exertion, the dancers worked in perfect harmony, gliding past each other in this vertical performance. Notions of up, down, forwards, and backwards quickly became blurred and for a few minutes, New York seemed mesmerized by this precarious dance. A dramatic musical score by composer David Van Tieghem heightened the atmosphere pervading the streets.