Open-ended questions

Our next two sessions in February concentrated on individual student presentations in the medieval galleries.  Each docent candidate was asked to pick an object and ask three open-ended questions about it, focusing on the "elements of art" (line, color, shape, texture).  Amazing how few of us actually followed the instructions, but in some ways, it was better not to.

My own presentation of the this stained-glass window would have been much improved if I had ignored those instructions to some extent and described the window in more detail before asking my questions.  

I wanted the "students" to focus on the shapes, and the way a stained-glass artist must rely on shapes to create his images.  He used shapes to create frames, to move from scene to scene, and to create his figures and representations.  Other than painting a few details,  usually on faces,  his only real tool is shape.  I'm pretty sure I did not get my points across.  I described the work only minimally to begin with.  When I asked what shapes one could see in this window, people began responding with things like "I see a boat" and describing what was happening in the scenes.  I hope to use this window again sometime, because I love it, but next time I will describe the scene and the story first and then ask my questions.  In this case, I followed the instructions too literally.  

Many of my fellow trainees did better on this.  Again, however, I find that less is more.  There was a line between those who told enough and those who told too much.  Those who asked questions that got us to notice details that meant something were most successful.  Those who seemed insistent on telling us a lot about a work kind of annoyed me.  And those that got dramatic, giving a full-fledged tour presentation about their object, complete with props, history and research, really lost me.  I don't know if they would lose the children, but they really lost me.  I look forward to learning whether these are just personal style differences or whether there really is more of a line between right and wrong.  

Most of the presentations were very good, especially when they inspired us to look and see things for ourselves in a work of art.  There was a fair amount of what I think was misinformation bandied about, but I hope we will avoid those things after we have had the art history section of this course.  These sessions were long, however, and listening to 21 presentations over two weeks got a little hard to take.  Luckily, most of the tours we give will be much shorter.

On the afternoon of February 27, John gave us another example of a discussion using the Visual Thinking Strategies method.  Many of my colleagues are finding this method incredibly difficult to understand.  We had many theories of what was happening in this painting, focusing on details to give us clues.

My concern about this method centers on the fact that the first person to comment when asked "What's happening in this picture?" may define the rest of the dialogue and stifle other ideas if the transitional question is "What else is happening?"  John responded that a skilled VTS interviewer may use a phrase only slightly different - "Who else would like to tell us what's happening in this picture?"- if the children seem to be stuck on one interpretation, but he says it doesn't really happen that often.

Next week, we try this on our own.