school outreach | Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated

Posts Tagged 'school outreach'

Home Poem

As Manager of Off-Site School Programs at the DMA, my job is to develop programming that brings the Museum into the classroom. This includes our long-standing Go van Gogh programs and our Middle School Outreach Pilot, a multi-session partnership program with L.V. Stockard Middle School and W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy.

Drawing inspiration from the DMA’s exhibition For a Dreamer of Houses, earlier this year students in our Middle School Outreach Pilot were asked to explore the concept of home through poetry, which they would later interpret through sculpture. While recent circumstances prevented students from completing their sculptures, their writing—which describes the spaces, people, feelings, sounds, tastes, and dreams that constitute home—gives us a collection of stories that tell us all we need to know.

Below, I’ve compiled lines written by students into one collaborative poem that tells a complex, expansive, conflicting, beautiful, honest, and hopeful account of what home means to youth in Dallas. I’ve paired their writing with images of works of art completed by students who participated in our Go van Gogh program A City of My Own, which is rooted in similar themes. Here, students were prompted to create cityscapes representative of their definition of Dallas—the landmarks, buildings, and places that make it their own.

During this time, when home can feel like a place we have to be, these students’ writing and works of art remind me of the beauty in all that something like home is and can be.

A student participates in Go van Gogh’s program “A City of My Own”

Home is when I’m with the people I love
Home is a place I feel loved
Home is where I feel safe
Home is when I’m with my family
Home is somewhere filled with laughter
Home is where I can be accepted and be myself
Home is the memory of friends, family, and vecinas jugando loteria los domingos
Home is the feeling you get when you eat raspas on a hot summer day
Home is the sound of the Spanish language everywhere
Home is hearing the radio play norteñas
Home is the color of happiness, calm like gray

Home wouldn’t be the same without Saturday cleaning and loud music
Home wouldn’t be the same without hearing dogs barking in the middle of the night
Home wouldn’t feel the same without my grandma and my grandpa
Home wouldn’t be the same without my mom

Home feels like el canto de los pájaros
Home feels like warmth
Home feels like love

Home sounds like thirty kids talking all at once
Home sounds like my mom singing everyday
Home sounds like a bunch of laughter when my tios, tias, and cousins come over
Home sounds like musica mexicana every morning
Home sounds like people always being up at two in the morning looking for something to eat

Home tastes like comida recien hecha
Home tastes like frijoles, caldo, and maruchan, and sometimes my mom attempting to be a baker
Home tastes like eggs and bacon and pan dulce
Home tastes like sopes, flautas, tacos, macheteadas
Home tastes like carne asada every saturday
Home tastes like tamales, barbacoa, birria, menudo, and donuts on sundays
Home tastes like enchiladas todos los sabados, y un restaurante los domingos

On the outside, home is a house made out of peach bricks and two strong trees
On the outside, home is amigas y vecinas jugando and chismeando
On the outside, people say that it is just a building
But on the inside, it feels very special to you
On the inside of home, I feel protected from anything

I dream of a home with my parents and sibling always by my side
I dream of a home that is big and can fit my whole family
I dream of a two-story home, brand new, and never broken
I dream of a home that is loud, warm, and funny
I dream of a home that is my own
I dream of a home that will never change

Bernardo Velez Rico is the Manager of Off-Site School Programs at the DMA.

Friday Photos: Arturo Flies the Coup!

Published January 22, 2016 Friday Photos Closed
Tags: Arturo, Go van Gogh, Go van Gogh van, school outreach

My internship is made up of many programs, tasks, and joys, but one of its main focuses is our Go Van Gogh program, which helps the Museum take art lessons into schools all over our community. Every week I drive the van to schools in Dallas to help teach students about artworks in the DMA’s permanent collection, and when we’re done we do an art project inspired by the lesson.

This week, after many weeks of begging and bargaining, I let Arturo drive the van to Lake Highlands Elementary School to observe our Stories in Art program! He asked to fly, but the supplies were a little too heavy for his wings, so I figured his pilot’s license would do on the Dallas highways. Here is a documented look at Arturo’s van day!

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To learn more about Go Van Gogh or to schedule a visit to your classroom, check out our website!

Whitney Sirois
McDermott Graduate Intern for Gallery and Community Teaching

Go van Gogh, Past to Present

Published August 28, 2013 Archive , Behind-the-Scenes , Dallas , DFW , Education , Go van Gogh 1 Comment
Tags: art education, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA, Go van Gogh, Go van Gogh van, Henri Matisse, School, school outreach

Go van Gogh, the DMA’s elementary school outreach program, is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Before we pack up the Go van Gogh van and head out to schools across the city, we thought it would be fun to take a look through all thirty-five years of the program.

1992 Go van Gogh program led by DMA educator Phil Collins

Below are a few fun facts about Go van Gogh through the years.

The first Go van Gogh van was actually a bus!

First Go van Gogh vehicle, 1978

When the program began at the then Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in Fair Park in 1978, school outreach presentations could be given in classrooms or on the Museum Outreach bus itself.

DMFA teaching staff member Roberta Mathew conducting an outreach program in the Go van Gogh bus in fall 1979

DMFA education staffers Susan Geyer and Roberta Mathews conducting an outreach program aboard the Go van Gogh bus in fall 1979

Go van Gogh vans (and buses) have always been easy to spot on the freeway.

Go van Gogh van in 1981

Go van Gogh van, c. 1988

Go van Gogh program, c. 1988

Bright and colorful, Go van Gogh vans often feature artworks from the Museum’s collection in painted or vinyl designs. The Go van Gogh van from the late 1990s included a design from Henri Matisse’s Ivy in Flower.

Go van Gogh van in the 1990s

Today’s Go van Gogh van

Go van Gogh programs have always included a visual presentation of artworks from the Museum.

Go van Gogh program using a slide projector, 1980s or 1990s

Through the years, we’ve made many updates in the technology we use to bring these artworks to life. What began with projectors and large printed posters led to overhead transparencies and laminated images.

Go van Gogh program with 4th graders at Reilly Elementary School

Later this school year, Go van Gogh will go digital: using iPads and projectors to bring images of artworks to life in the classroom.

Looking ahead to fall, we are excited to unveil a new facet of Go van Gogh outreach–a program designed for Special Education classrooms called Color My World. To learn more about the program, visit our website.

Amy Copeland is the Manager of Go van Gogh and Community Teaching Programs at the DMA.

Friday Photos: Oh, the places we’ve been!

Published March 22, 2013 Friday Photos Closed
Tags: Ben Milam Elementary, Go van Gogh van, L.K. Hall Elementary, Ronald McNair Elementary, school outreach, Thomas Tolbert Elementary, William Anderson Elementary, Zion Lutheran School

Go van Gogh van

With the recent introduction of our DMA Dashboard, we’ve been keeping a careful eye on the mileage of our Go van Gogh van, which has made for some fun stats tracking.

So far, our outreach this school year has taken us 1,300 miles—enough for a trip from the Museum to Washington D.C.! Below are a few other fun facts about our outreach destinations and the van trips we’ve taken this year.

Destination closest to home: Ben Milam Elementary, a mere 2.6 miles away—soo close we could almost bike there.
Farthest afield: Brentfield Elementary, a 63.4 mile round-trip!
All the usual places: L.K. Hall Elementary, Ronald McNair Elementary, and Thomas Tolbert Elementary are in our van’s GPS frequently—we’ve visited each at least five times.
Home(s) away from home: William Anderson Elementary and Zion Lutheran School are our homes away from home. We’ve made ten trips to each for a whopping one-fifth of our total mileage!

Portrait of a Woman

Crown with deity figures

Single-spout strap-handle vessel depicting a wounded warrior

Our next van excursion will be tomorrow, Saturday March 23. The Go van Gogh team will be at Firewheel Town Center in Garland, to provide art-making activities at Kidsfest, from 11:00am-3:00pm. We hope you’ll make the trip and join us there!

Amy Copeland
Manager of Go van Gogh and Community Teaching Programs

Thank you, Medrano Elementary Fourth Graders!

Published December 29, 2009 Art & Teaching Closed
Tags: Go van Gogh, People, program, school outreach, students, teacher

Every once in a while, a teacher will take advantage of our Go van Gogh programs and schedule everything that is possible for his/her students. This is the case with the fourth grade teachers at Esperanza “Hope” Medrano Elementary, a Dallas ISD school.

Over a three month period, we visited Medrano Elementary fourth graders four times with four different Go van Gogh programs. As a result, Go van Gogh volunteers and staff established a unique relationship with a mixture of people at Medrano Elementary. Their front staff recognized us and welcomed us warmly when we arrived at the school. We looked forward to our visits, because the students are bright, engaged, and enthusiastic. The teachers are always prepared and helpful as well. Because of our familiarity with the school, we piloted a new program with one of the fourth grade classrooms, during which we received great feedback from both the teacher and the students.

Our final visit to the Medrano Elementary fourth graders was in mid-November. Last week, we were surprised and delighted by an envelope full of thank-you letters written and illustrated by the students. Below are a few highlights.

Melissa Nelson
Manager of Learning Partnerships with the Community

Lights, Camera, Action!

Published October 28, 2009 Art & Teaching , Community Connection , Creativity , Museum Insight , People 4 Comments
Tags: All the World's a Stage, exhibition, Go van Gogh, performance, program, school outreach, teacher, works of art

Dancers of Tlaxcala (Danzantes de Tlaxcala), Carlos Mérida, 1951

It’s an exciting time in the Arts District with the grand opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center. In honor of our new neighbor, we’ve developed a new Go van Gogh school outreach program called Creative Connections: Lights, Camera, Action! that focuses on three diverse works of art in the Museum collection and invites students to respond creatively through movement and drama. Creative Connections programs are 90-minutes long, during which students participate in what we call “experiments” that involve collaborating with others, applying multiple approaches to solving problems, and producing a creative expression. These programs can be messy, loud, and challenging – and they are definitely a lot of fun.

If you’re a 3-6th grade teacher and don’t mind a little bit of noise in the classroom, I hope you’ll consider this program for your students. I promise you’ll be amazed and impressed by the creativity, thought, and enthusiasm they put into their performances. Requesting a program is easy with our online form.

With a background in art history and a bit of studio art, the task of writing a program about performance intimidated me. However, I have the great fortune of working with talented people, and I interviewed some of them during my initial research. I spoke with Lanita Sene, who I know through our partnership with the South Dallas Cultural Center. Lanita leads African dance and culture classes during Summer Arts at the Center. I also spoke with Blanca Reyna and Calvin Rollins, who I met through our partnership with the Ice House Cultural Center summer camp. Blanca specializes in Aztec culture, and Calvin is a dance student at Southern Methodist University (he also attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts). Last, I spoke with my colleague Amy Copeland who studied dance at Booker T. Washington and other studios in the Dallas area.

This talented group provided many helpful ideas, like warm-up exercises that capture the students’ attention and focus. Another great suggestion was empowering students by giving them specialized roles in their performances and encouraging them to lead peer critiques.

I tested the program with 4th graders and 6th graders who created dances, music, masks, and skits inspired by artworks in our exhibition All the World’s a Stage: Performance in the Visual Arts. The shyest students contributed by helping to plan, write, and direct the performances. The boldest students reveled in the opportunity to show off in front of their peers. Afterward, one teacher remarked that it was fun seeing her students in a new light, and the other felt it was a great program for bilingual students.

This past Friday, I trained our volunteers and gave them the same challenges students experience during the program. I watched as they worked together in groups, sometimes giggling, at times with their brows furrowed. They all agreed that they can’t wait to bring the program to Dallas classrooms.

It’s showtime!

Melissa Nelson
Manager of Learning Partnerships with the Community

Go van Gogh van, out and about!

Published September 30, 2009 Art & Teaching 3 Comments
Tags: Community, Go van Gogh, school outreach, students

Go van Gogh van

Today marks the end of our first month of Go van Gogh programs for the 2009-10 school year, and Go van Gogh volunteers and staff are excited to be back in the classrooms!

The Go van Gogh program, in its 31^st year, serves elementary schools within Dallas city limits, bringing interactive conversations about works of art and art-making activities to over fifteen thousand students annually. The Go van Gogh van is out and about four days a week; at a different school with a different program each day. We have a great variety of programs for the 2009-10 school year. Among them, Lights, Camera, Action!, a new addition inspired by the All the World’s a Stage exhibition that involves students in role-playing and creative movement activities.

Today, the Go van Gogh team is at a South Dallas elementary school, and volunteers are visiting third grade classrooms with one of my favorite programs: Stories in Art. We are capturing student responses to the morning’s program and are posting them to Twitter, so check back to hear what students have to say.

Visit our web site to learn more about the Go van Gogh programs we are offering this year. We hope to be visiting your classrooms soon!

Amy Copeland

Coordinator of Learning Partnerships with Schools and the Community

Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated

Posts Tagged 'school outreach'

Home Poem

Friday Photos: Arturo Flies the Coup!

Go van Gogh, Past to Present

Friday Photos: Oh, the places we’ve been!

Thank you, Medrano Elementary Fourth Graders!

Lights, Camera, Action!

Go van Gogh van, out and about!

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