Each of us was assigned one painting in the 19th Century galleries and asked to do a VTS presentation of that painting for about 10 minutes. For such a simple technique, we had a lot of problems. Some of my colleagues just couldn't bear not disclosing the subject of the painting. Others were dying to direct our attention to some part of the painting. Still others gave clues by their voice and body language when a "student" said something close to what the docent wanted them to say.
As a student, I was a bit contrarian. I wanted to throw out some weird interpretations of the paintings, especially when I thought it likely that a child who doesn't know as much history, religion, etc., would say such things. Seeing a cherub in the sky and a guy shot by arrows being tended by a beautiful woman, will a child think St. Sebastian, or will a child think Cupid?
As a teacher, I like this method very much and did not feel at all compelled to try to direct the students' attention to anything in particular. I like the idea of letting them give me lots of different ideas. I did have my own problems, however, most having to do with my usual habits of speech. It is such a habit for me to say things like, "oh, good" and "okay, great" and those things are anathema to this technique.
Here's the idea. You ask only three questions, with slight variations in wording allowed but not in meaning. "What's happening in this picture?" Paraphrase that response, then say, "What do you see that makes you say that [or even better, insert part of the paraphrase here]?" The hard part about this for some people, although honestly I don't think for me, is not to add anything to what the student said, and not to react, even if that comment is kind of crazy. And then, very important, to just say, "thank you" in a neutral tone of voice. That was my issue.
After about 10 of these presentations, I found this method pretty tedious. But I do think I was getting it, and I think it will be a wonderful technique to use in a modified fashion. Here's the painting I was assigned to discuss
It is very tiny and actually much harder to see in the gallery than it is in this picture.
John is very well-trained in this method and takes it very seriously. Our group was broken into two sub-groups, however, and my group had Jennifer instead. She was very laid back. We finished earlier.
In the afternoon, we went into the studio to see what the students would do if they have a studio experience before or after their tour with a docent. Again, I am hugely impressed at what the Walters is doing and the lengths they will go to to try to reach a child. After a discussion of how to review museum procedures and rules, we watched the movie that the kids would likely see about how to behave in a museum.
We then experienced one of the Ancient World activities. We all agreed on definitions of "artifact," "ancient" and "archeology" and discussed how a museum might acquire the objects in its collections. We looked at some slides of Greek amphora and then got to draw a design for our own. We transferred our designs to these really cool scratch plates - scratch away the black to reveal gold underneath. Very cool, and a learning process even for the experienced art viewers among us. We really understood much better the differences between red-figured style (background is painted on and turns black in firing, leaving the design in red clay to show through) and black-figured style (design is painted on and background remains red) once we tried to re-create each on our scratch plates.
Next, we re-created a Telling Stories in Art experience. The teaching staff went over the elements of story (setting, characters, plot, etc.) and we were then given styrofoam pads and lots of materials to create our own setting. What a great way to get kids thinking in a fun way.
No comments:
Post a Comment