Posts Tagged 'teacher workshop'

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Schedule Soon for the Spring

Published March 25, 2010 Museum Insight Closed
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It’s hard to believe that there are only a few months of school left.  The spring is always a very busy time for us, and this year is no exception.  This is a good opportunity to let you know what types of programs for students and teachers are still available for the 2009-2010 school year.

Go van Gogh
All Go van Gogh programs have been booked for the spring. 

Museum Visits
There are a limited number of times still available for docent-guided Museum visits.  Many of these slots are during the month of April, so this is the best time to bring your students to visit The Lens of Impressionism.  We have a very limited number of docent-guided openings in the month of May, and most of them are during the 1:00 p.m. time slot. 

If you are unable to schedule a docent-guided visit to the Museum, schedule a self-guided visit.  We have a self-guided tour resource available online that you can use to guide your students through the DMA.

To request a docent-guided or self-guided visit for your students, you will need to submit an Online Visit Request Form as soon as possible.  Remaining spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Programs for Teachers
We will have two additional Thursday evening programs for teachers.  Visit our Web site to learn more.

We also have one more Teacher Workshop scheduled for this year.  Exploring Photography: The Lens of Impressionism is a two-part workshop offered on April 24th and May 1st.  Teachers will spend time in The Lens of Impressionism with Dr. Terry Barrett.  Photographer and educator Frank Lopez will also demonstrate the ambrotype process.  Reserve your spot now before remaining spaces fill.

We hope to see you and your students at the DMA this spring!

Shannon Karol
Tour Coordinator

Community Connection: Using Art to Get at Life

Published March 18, 2010 Art & Teaching , People 1 Comment
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As museum professionals, we attend conferences regularly to share the exciting work we are doing at the DMA and to learn from our national and international colleages.  I attended the annual National Art Education Assocation Convention for the first time in 2004, and I had the pleasure of participating in a session led by Dr. Terry Barrett.  Since then, I scan each year’s schedule to make sure I don’t miss an opportunity to learn from Dr. Barrett.  Last year, I was delighted to hear that he had joined the Art Education faculty at the University of North Texas.  I recently had a chance to talk with Dr. Barrett before UNT adjourned for Spring Break. 

Dr. Terry Barrett

What sparked your interest in art education?

I’ve been in the field a long time and I got into it by default.  When I graduated from college, I was eligible for the Vietnam War draft.  I was opposed to the war, and one way to avoid the draft was to teach.  I began teaching in an inner-city, all-black high school in St. Louis; I was there the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.  I fell in love with the kids and decided I liked teaching.  I’ve been teaching ever since.

How would you describe your theory to a person with no experience in art education?

My mission is to help people appreciate art and to appreciate life through art, because I think art gives us different ways of thinking about the world.

Did you ever have a great idea that didn’t work?  What did you learn from that experience?

No, I don’t think I ever had a great idea that didn’t work.  Thinking of “great ideas” is intimidating in itself.  Other people come to me with great ideas – I have said yes to many offers throughout my career, and that’s led me to different directions that have been very interesting.

For example, one big change in my career occurred when a former student asked if I would be an art critic in education for the Ohio Arts Council and I said, “Yeah, why not?”  Being an art critic in the schools enlivened me;  my research, my teaching and my community service came together like a circle – a productive circle.

I was a cancer patient about 5 years ago.   I went through chemotherapy and private counseling and during that time I figured out I wasn’t afraid to die, but I was afraid of becoming old and inactive.  My counselor told me I have to get over that fear and suggested I go to an assisted living community and work with the elderly.  I said “Why not?”.  I also started doing contemporary art interpretation with people with cancer, and we started seeing how those images related to our lives. They really enjoyed the process and produced some beautiful writings.  That’s when I started thinking about life issues more than art issues and using art to get at life.

I had enough years at Ohio State to retire, but there was an opening at University of North Texas and I thought “Why not?”.  I wasn’t ready to retire; I wanted to stay active and keep working, writing, and teaching.

I love your artist statement about choices you’ve made related to making art, your creative process, and the materials you choose.  Can you tell me more about how you came to these decisions – was it a learning experience of trial and error, or did you approach artmaking this way from the beginning?

When I was young, I made art instinctively and intuitively. As I got older and was writing more, I didn’t have time to make art and do it well, so I stopped.  I realized I missed it, and that’s when I began painting.  Sandy Skoglund told me I needed something to fit my lifestyle.  As an example, she told me about a friend who frequently traveled on an airplane and made small collages because they didn’t require a lot of space or materials.  The small paintings I make really satisfy me.  They’re fun to make and I don’t exhibit them; I just do them for my own enjoyment.

It seems like much of your life and work has been in the Midwest, specifically Ohio.  What is your impression/experience of living and working in north Texas?

I miss the trees, but I like the sunshine a lot. The people here are friendlier than they are in the Midwest. There’s a degree of politeness that I like; the Midwest has a reputation for being a friendly place, but people here smile and make eye contact and open doors more than I’m used to.  I love wide open skies, and I love living in horse country.  I wish some rich ranch owner would give me a little plot of land to live on a horse farm, where I would build a small green house with a small ecological footprint.

Dr. Barrett will lead part of an upcoming Teacher Workshop titled  Exploring Photography: The Lens of Impressionism, along with photographer and educator Frank Lopez.  Visit the website to learn more and register.

Melissa Nelson
Manager of Learning Partnerships with the Community

Jacob Lawrence, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Connections to the DMA Collection

Published February 11, 2010 Art & Teaching Closed
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Last Saturday, Logan Acton and I led a teacher workshop focused on making connections between the exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture and other works of art in the DMA’s collection.  We began by looking closely at the fifteen prints in the exhibition–each teacher focused her attention on one screenprint.  It was fascinating to hear the teachers’ observations about the prints.  I tend to emphasize context and the “big picture,” and the teachers focused my attention on aspects like line, shape, and color.  As one of the teachers put it–“We see history through all of the images.  We see the art elements when we look at just one print.” 

The prints in this exhibition were created between 1986 and 1997 and are based on a series of 41 paintings made in 1938.  We compared and contrasted images of the original paintings with two of the prints in the exhibition.  Lawrence made significant changes in these prints, such as including a wound on the chest of a man that is not present in the 1938 painting.  We discussed why Lawrence may have made these changes and how they might alter our interpretation of the prints.

We couldn’t discuss General Toussaint L’Ouverture without also looking at Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington.  Both men are shown in uniform, and both led revolutions that were happening around the same time, resulting in their respective countries gaining independence.

We also spent time making connections between Jacob Lawrence and artists like Renee Stout, and Romare Bearden.    Bearden and Lawrence were contemporaries, and both were very interested in showing scenes from African American life and history in their artworks.   Renee Stout is a contemporary artist who is inspired by African works of art, such as nkisi, and creates her own power figures. 

 If you would like to learn more about Jacob Lawrence and Toussaint L’Ouverture, I hope you’ll attend the Arts and Letters Live program on March 4th at 7:30 p.m., featuring Samella Lewis and Madison Smartt Bell.  I will lead a program for teachers in the exhibition beginning at 6:30 p.m. that evening.  We’ll explore the exhibition together before joining the program in the Horchow Auditorium.  I hope to see you on March 4th! 

Shannon Karol
Tour Coordinator

Contemporary Art Teacher Workshop

Published January 28, 2010 Art & Teaching , works of art Closed
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Last weekend teachers attended the second half of a two-part teacher workshop about contemporary art offered by the Dallas Museum of Art and The Rachofsky House. During the first session, held at the DMA on January 9th, teachers interacted with works of art in the special exhibitions All the World’s a Stage and Performance/Art, as well as in the newest installation in the Hoffman galleries.

Teacher Workshop in the Hoffman Galleries

During our three and a half hours together that day, Molly Kysar and I led interactive experiences, discussion and writing while looking at a variety of works of art. This past Saturday, January 23rd, we met at The Rachofsky House where Thomas Feulmer introduced teachers to the current installation, Presence.

Thomas began our morning together by offering teachers the opportunity to experience works by artists they had seen during our first session at the Museum, including Glenn Ligon, David Altmejd, Thomas Struth, and Gregory Crewdson. In each case the work on view at the DMA and that at The Rachofsky House were quite different in scale and their subject matter was approached through different means. The Altmejd sculpture on view at the Museum, for instance, is titled “The Eye” and fills one of the quadrant galleries in Performance/Art with its energetically rising mirrored staircases, obelisks, and punctured surfaces in a spectacular reference to the creation of the atom bomb. At The Rachofsky House, on the other hand, Altmejd’s “The Quail,” though still constructed with mirrors and towering above the viewer, includes a number of quail eggs encased in glass and is more evocative of Stonehenge than it is of explosions.

The Eye, 2008, David Altmejd

Wood and mirrors
Overall: 129 1/2 x 216 1/2 x 144 1/2 in. (3 m 28.931 cm x 5 m 49.911 cm x 3 m 67.031 cm)

The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through The Rachofsky Collection Fund and the DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund

© David Altmejd, courtesy the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery

The workshop provided a great chance to explore a few works by Gregory Crewdson, who will be speaking at the DMA this Wednesday, February 3rd, as part of a lecture series hosted by The University of Texas at Dallas’ new Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology. We will host a teacher workshop that evening, including two hours discussing Crewdson’s work and contemporary photography before attending the public lecture.

The DMA and The Rachofsky House will again join, along with the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Fort Worth Modern, and the Kimbell Art Museum, for this year’s Museum Forum for Teachers, taking place July 19-23. Applications are now being accepted.

Logan Acton
McDermott Graduate Teaching Programs Intern

Community Connection: Contemporary Art and a Beluga Whale

Published December 15, 2009 Art & Teaching , People , works of art 3 Comments
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Thomas Feulmer is the Director of Educational Programming at The Rachofsky House and is a regular collaborator with the DMA.  We always look forward to his fresh ideas and perceptive insights related to works of art and artists.

Describe your work at The Rachofsky House.  What is your favorite part of your job?

As Director of Educational Programming, I do anything involving schools or the public having any interaction with the Rachofsky House.  My favorite part of my job is being around the works of art and being around original objects.  I also like the creative element of having to improvise in front of groups and having to think on your feet.

Thomas talks about a work of art at the 2009 Museum Forum for Teachers.

 Tell us about your relationship with the DMA.

I work collaboratively with Molly Kysar on Programs for Teachers based on Contemporary Art. I’ve also worked with Nicole Stutzman on the Travis Academy Program.  The UT Southwestern Medical School class “The Art of Observation”, led by DMA docents Margaret Anne Cullum and Joanna Pistenmaa, visit The Rachofsky House once during the semester.  I also participate in the development of some programs and exhibitions, in part by talking about artists and artworks that are in both the Rachofsky Collection and the DMA collections or are on loan to the DMA. 

 If you could take home any work of art from the Rachofsky Collection, what would you choose?

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio, 1964

One of the first things that comes to mind is the Lucio Fontana piece Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio.  It’s one of the works that every time I stand in front of it, I think it’s incredible.  When I’m looking at that piece, I feel like I’m looking at a real, sincere thing that is about exploring and is about a rich and deep thinking on the artists’s part. 

 How would you describe your personal work as an artist?

Most of my work looks at relationships: relationships between people, and more recently, relationships between people and animals.  It is also about how intimacy is managed and expressed and how desire and attraction are managed and expressed.  One of the big themes in my recent show is about my relationship with a beluga whale.  I like the notion that most people have a desire to have a pure relationship with an animal and we project a lot of our purist ideas about love and desire onto animals because they seem so unguarded, I guess. I love that we project all those purist things onto animals, but, to have an experience with a beluga whale it had to happen at Sea World, which is a big place.  The whale is trained and follows commands, and ultimately the experience is all controlled – which, in a way, is how all interactions are.  See Thomas’s recent work at New Work by Rebecca Carter and Thomas Feulmer, open December 5-20, 2009 at 500X.

Does your job have an impact on your own work as an artist?

Yes, because I can come into contact with so much art and I feel like I get such a great sampling of contemporary ideas and contemporary culture.  It’s like constant research for how to create meaning or visual culture in the contemporary world.

Meet Thomas during our two-part January Teacher Workshop on Contemporary Art, which takes place at the Dallas Museum of Art and The Rachofsky House.

Melissa Nelson
Manager of Learning Partnerships with the Community

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O'Keeffe may be her name, but this artist's work has been long eclipsed by that of her famous sister. Now #IdaOKeeffe's distinct creative identity is getting the spotlight it deserves in "Ida O'Keeffe: Escaping Georgia's Shadow". Opening TODAY, discover uA remarkable performance by @dallasblackdance in our American Art Gallery with choreography inspired by artist Dorothy Austin’s “Slow Shuffle”. See more #DMANights highlights in our story! . . #MyDMA #DallasMuseumofArt #AmericanArt #Dance #DancePerformanc
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