Letters to LeDray
May 10, 2011

A school that visits the Whitney all the time, PS 56 in Queens, was able to score a special pen pal for their fifth grade class–Whitney artist Charles LeDray!

Fifth graders from PS 56Q participated in our classroom collaborative program last winter and focused on the exhibition, Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork, on view at the Whitney from November 18, 2010 through February 13, 2011. Students visited the LeDray exhibition for a guided tour and worked on projects related to LeDray’s art.

After the collaborative ended, Ms. Alperstein, their classroom teacher, asked each student to write a letter to Charles LeDray telling him what they liked about his work and what some of their favorite pieces in the exhibition were.They also talked about the sculpture project they worked on in class with the Museum educator and how LeDray had inspired them to become artists.Their teacher sent the letters to the Whitney School Programs team as a thank you.The letters were so terrific, we wondered if the artist would like to read them himself!

We mailed the letters to Mr. LeDray, and a few weeks later, we came to work to find a voicemail from the artist himself! He liked the letters so much that he wanted to send something back to the students, so we gave him the school’s address and the teacher’s name.

A week later, we received a wonderful email and phone call from PS 56Q.They had read LeDray’s letter and the students were so excited that he had written to them. As Ms. Alperstein said, "You can just imagine how much that means to us to have the encouragement of an artist of Mr. LeDray's magnitude. The students were smitten by his work and have come to adopt the Whitney as their own."

We were happy and excited to help foster this unplanned partnership, and hope we can find a Whitney artist to become our pen pal too!  Cory Arcangel…are you interested?

By Liz Gillroy, Assistant to School Programs