A DMA conference room where great programming ideas are born.
Archive Page 7
Seldom Scene: A Weekly Snapshot
Published November 8, 2010 Behind-the-Scenes ClosedTags: behind the scenes, Programs
Late Nights: Celebrating Mexico’s Bicentennial til the Midnight Hour
Published September 16, 2010 Education , Exhibitions , Late Nights ClosedTags: Brainstorming, Late Nights, Programs
Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art take place on the third Friday of every month (except December) and can bring up to 5,000 visitors to the Museum in just one evening. With eleven Late Nights to plan each year, we are constantly brainstorming program ideas and themes.
The process starts with coming up with a theme for each Late Night month. These are usually decided a year in advance by looking at our upcoming exhibitions, works of art in our collection, or other special events and occasions like the Museum’s annual birthday celebration in January.
We have three Late Nights left in 2010 and each one will celebrate a different exhibition on view this fall. The next one, on September 17, focuses on our México 200 exhibitions: José Guadalupe Posada: The Birth of Mexican Modernism and Tierra y Gente: Modern Mexican Works on Paper. These two exhibits, which showcase Mexico’s long tradition of exquisite artistry, were planned as a way to commemorate the Mexican bicentennial.
Once the themes of each Late Night are chosen, the programming team decides which performers, speakers, and programs to schedule, making sure there is a mix of live music and performances, lectures, tours, films, family activities, Tech Lab programs, and other special events. Through our own research, recommendations from colleagues, and old-fashioned word-of-mouth, we choose the Late Night performers and speakers who we feel tie into the main theme of the evening while also offering something new and interesting for our visitors to experience. These special guests come from all across Texas, often from across the country, and once in a while, from abroad.
We also collaborate with other organizations in our North Texas community to present joint programs at Late Night. In September the acclaimed Mexican poet Homero Aridjis will be at the Museum to give a reading in both English and Spanish. This program is hosted in partnership with the Center for Translation Studies at UT Dallas.
We’ve just finished deciding on our themes for the 2011 Late Nights, and while we’ll keep them a secret for now, we hope to see you at one or maybe even all of them!
Stacey Lizotte is Head of Adult Programming and Multimedia Services.
School is officially back in session. As the big, yellow buses begin to pull up on Harwood Street later this month, a flurry of young feet will file out, pass by a large fountain, and ultimately find themselves standing before the likes of Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral, Frederic Church’s The Icebergs, or a huge sculpture of the Mixtec rain god Tlaloc. These works of art and thousands of others become the stuff museum memories are made of for over 60,000 students in grades K-12 who visit the Dallas Museum of Art each year. Another 17,000 students annually experience the Museum’s treasures through our Go van Gogh® classroom outreach programs and through an after-school program created in partnership with Thriving Minds and managed by the nonprofit Big Thought.
During the 2010-2011 school year, hundreds of teachers will participate in professional development sessions, visit the Educator Blog, access online resources, and partner with DMA museum educators to create unique, in-depth experiences for their students.
And our galleries will soon fill with the buzz of young minds and voices actively learning. This is how my colleagues and I who work in the Department of Teaching Programs and Partnerships like it. We are a passionate team of seven staff memers, two interns, and nearly two hundred volunteers, and we welcome students and teachers with the belief that art is essential to all of our lives. The Dallas Museum of Art is a place to imagine, to explore, and to form personal connections with works of art from around the world and throughout time.
Nicole Stutzman is the Director of Teaching Programs and Partnerships.
Upcoming Arts and Letters Live…
Published May 4, 2010 Art & Teaching , Community Connection , Museum Insight , works of art ClosedTags: Arts & Letters Live, Arts and Letters Live, Coastlines, Isabel Allende, Robert Kurson
Arts & Letters Live has a slew of exciting authors slated to visit the DMA in the coming months, coinciding with the recent opening of the DMA’s new special exhibition Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea. Author Robert Kurson will be at the DMA on Thursday, May 6th to talk about his book Shadow Divers, which tells the story of two weekend scuba divers who risk everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II (get tickets). If you haven’t visited Coastlines already (or even if you have), there is a great opportunity to learn about the exhibition before the lecture; Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art, will lead a tour of Coastlines at 6:30, with Kurson’s lecture to follow at 7:30. Then join Isabel Allende at First United Methodist on Thursday, May 13th to hear about her new book Island Beneath the Sea, which tells the story of the intertwined lives of Tete, a Haitian slave, and Toulouse Valmorain, a plantation owner’s son. Click here for tickets.
Justin Greenlee McDermott Intern, Teaching Programs and Partnerships
Go van Gogh at KidsFest 2010
Published April 12, 2010 Art & Teaching , Community Connection , Creativity , Friday Photos ClosedTags: Go van Gogh, KidsFest
Amy Copeland and I recently took the Go van Gogh van out to Firewheel Town Center for KidsFest 2010. We set up shop in a booth on the square, setting out watercolors, colored pencils, crayons, and oil pastels. We had an amazing turnout– over one hundred kids made a work of art!
Justin Greenlee
McDermott Intern, Teaching Programs and Partnerships
Arts and Letters Live: Texas Bound II
Published April 5, 2010 Art & Teaching , Community Connection , Creativity 1 CommentTags: Arts and Letters Live, Booker T. Washington, Texas Bound, Texas Stories II
Over the years the DMA has actively collaborated with students from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. We’re neighbors, and we benefit from having each other around. It’s a self-sustaining engine: students share their talents with us, we instigate and inspire new creative effort in them, and they share their creative output with us all over again.
The Dallas Museum of Art, Booker T. Washington, and The Dee and Charles Wyly Theater for the Performing Arts recently collaborated on Arts & Letters Live’s Texas Bound: Texas Stories I. Texas actors gathered to read short stories by Texas authors Larry L. King, Jennifer Mathieu, Mark Wisniewski, and Matt Clark. G.W. Bailey’s reading of Matt Clark’s The Crowned Heads of Pecos was a particular treat: Sad to say, but the bridge is gone now… If you haven’t read it, get a copy. It’s wonderful. As the actors read, photographs of works by students from BTW’s Portfolio Class were projected behind them.
There won’t be any student artworks this time (the BTW students are busy preparing for the DMA’s Art Ball), but Arts & Letters Live has put together a fantastic line-up for Texas Bound: Texas Stories II. The event takes place on Monday, April 19th at 7:30 p.m. in the Horchow Auditorium and features stories by Sarah Bird, Will Dunlap, Tim O’Brien and Cristina Henríquez read by Julie White, John Benjamin Hickey, and James Crawford (tickets). Don’t miss it!
Justin Greenlee
McDermott Intern with Teaching Programs and Partnerships
Lightning Kiss by Angelica Valdez
Neurological Fears by Danni Rogina-Lopez
A Part of You by Deanna Smith
BooksmART: John Grandits @ the DMA
Published March 9, 2010 Art & Teaching , Community Connection , Creativity , People , Technology , works of art ClosedTags: Arts and Letters Live, BooksmART, Center for Creative Connections, Concrete Poetry, John Grandits, poetry
John Grandits is a very funny man, and he’s coming to the DMA! If you’ve found that sonnets, ballads, and Roman epics are too heavy for you, Mr. Grandits is here to make poetry downright concrete. If that sounds intimidating, it’s not—poetry can be a lot of fun. Grandits is a concrete poet, and he’s the author of two immensely enjoyable (and highly acclaimed) books for kids: Technically, It’s Not My Fault and Blue Lipstick. If you’re tired of Times New Roman and typing left to right, this is your kind of poetry. Grandits’ poems move in squiggly lines, travel up and down, and create pictures on the page. He uses fonts, shapes, textures, colors, and sometimes even motion.
If you would like to get a sense of his work, visit his Web site. It’s full of quirky photos, playful type, and a great poem about a beleaguered snake. If you’d like to do a little research, check out his books at the Dallas Public Library. John Grandits will be at the Museum March 18-20, a fantastic opportunity to learn about his work. Visit the Web site to learn about all the events Arts & Letters Live has planned for John Grandits’ visit to the DMA.
Justin Greenlee
McDermott Intern, Learning Partnerships Department
On February 9th artistic director Ryan Taylor and the ensemble cast of Vocal Colors put on a great show at the Dallas Museum of Art. This unique event put the arts on stage as singers, actors, dancers, and musicians from all over the country offered performances responding to artworks in the museum’s collection. Researched months in advance, each artist’s contribution animated their chosen artwork, providing a fresh, sonic viewpoint. The music was both moving and playful, reverent and funny—ear and eye-awakening. Abraham Walkowitz’s Isadora Duncan Dancing was an artistic lynchpin for the night, but the works of art chosen for response ranged from ancient Chinese art, with Figure of a Court Lady and “Mo Li Hua” (a traditional Chinese folksong) to modern radio, with Nocturne Radio and “Moon Over Miami.” The high point of the night, however, was a moving and brilliant selection from a secretive Vatican mass titled “Miserere Mei,” accompanying the DMA’s ambient and terrifying new acquisition of David Altmejd’s The Eye (to hear “Miserere Mei,” click here). A playful moment was provided by soprano Ava Pine, and her choice of William Bolcom’s “Amor” to accompany Erte’s Aphrodite. Erte’s work shows a real femme fatale, beautiful and lethal, parasol in hand. Aphrodite came to life on the DMA stage, and she (or was it Ms. Pine?) had everyone shouting “Amor, Amor, Amor, Amor!” Keep an eye out for other great offerings from Arts and Letters Live, including the upcoming performance of Texas Bound: Texas Short Series I, at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theater (to purchase tickets, call 214.922.1818). The show will also feature visual responses from students at Booker T. Washington, not to be missed!
Justin Greenlee
McDermott Intern, Learning Partnerships Department
Aphrodite, by Erte
The Eye, by David Altmejd
Words are Art!: Concrete Poetry at the DMA
Published January 13, 2010 Art & Teaching , works of art 2 CommentsTags: Art, language, words in art
The DMA is partnering with Joanna Henry and students from the Exploratory Arts Academy at Greiner Middle School to investigate how words and images can be integrated in works of art. During their visit to the museum on December 15th, students participated in a ninety-minute tour featuring works of art that involve both images and text. By suggesting that “words are art,” and talking about artists as “visual storytellers,” students realized that the artistic gap between words and images isn’t as wide as they might have imagined. Students created concrete poems (poems in which the words are arranged to produce a composition with visual, as well as poetic, meaning), sketched, wrote captions, and composed written responses in an “accidental,” automatic style. The Greiner students have plans to come back to the museum, but here are some of the works they saw during their first visit, and their own visual/textual responses:
Piet Mondrian, "Place de la Concorde," 1943-1948: After looking at this painting and reading John Grandit's poem "Mondrian," students responded by creating their own concrete poems based on works of art in the museum galleries.
John Grandits' poem "Mondrian," about a teenage girl's visit to a museum with her father.
Piet Mondrian, "Self-Portrait," 1942
Robert Delaunay, "Eiffel Tower," 1924 Rene Magritte, "Persian Letters," 1958
Dorothea Tanning, "Pincushion to Serve as a Fetish," 1979
If you’d like to compose some concrete poetry of your own, Arts and Letters Live will be sponsoring a series of events with John Grandits:
DIY at the DMA: Thursday, March 18th, 6:30-8:30PM in the DMA Tech Lab —“Try your own hand at concrete poetry inspired by works of art”
Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art: Friday, March 19th, 8:30-10:00PM, C3 Theater—“John Grandits will share insights into his creative process and information about the history of concrete poetry from A.D. 800 to the present (including one from Alice and Wonderland). Then you will write and design your own concrete poems inspired by works in the collection!”
Young Writers Workshop: Saturday, March 20th, 1:00-4:00PM, in the DMA Tech Lab—“Teens 13-18 years old who love to write and design can explore the Museum’s collections with John Grandits and then create their own concrete poems either by hand or in the Tech Lab”
Justin Greenlee
McDermott Intern with the Learning Partnerships Department
Artist is the New Astronaut
Published November 17, 2009 Art & Teaching , works of art ClosedTags: Art of the Lone Star State, Go van Gogh, tag, Texas Art
During the past few months I’ve had the opportunity to visit classrooms throughout the Dallas Independent School District, teaching 1st-6th graders about works of art in the DMA’s collection. Educational outreach programs like Go van Gogh and the museum’s Talented and Gifted (TAG) program reach hundreds of kids each month, and so far I’ve met some great kids with some great art insights. Here are a few stories from my first months at the museum:
Last week I was out in the community visiting David G. Burnet Elementary School. I was teaching a Go van Gogh program called Art of the Lone Star State to a group of excited fourth graders. We had just finished looking at four works of art by Texas artists. To wrap up, I asked, “What was your favorite work of art that you saw today?” One student raised his hand, looked out the window, and pointed to the Go van Gogh van parked in the school parking lot—“THAT!” he said. Is the van art? This budding artist seemed to think so.
Art with Four Legs
Art with Four Wheels
A few days ago I was walking through the hallways of Felix Botello Elementary carrying my Go van Gogh bag, and I heard a student whisper to his friend, “It’s the museum man!” As I passed by, he slapped me a high-five. Walking into the classroom, another student excitedly shouted, “It’s an artist!” As it turns out, they were the artists that day; they made extraordinary model chairs out of ordinary materials like straws and tin foil.
Yesterday I visited James B. Bonham Elementary, teaching a Go van Gogh program called Creative Connections: Ordinary to Extraordinary. I asked one student how his art project was coming along— “This is the best day of my life!” he said. Another student said, “When I grow up, I want to be an artist!” I’m glad to see that artist is the new astronaut.
If you’re a teacher or a parent and I’ve mentioned your school, let us know. We’d love to hear from you. As more stories come in, I’ll keep you updated.
Justin Greenlee
Learning Partnerships Intern