The value of the Museum Field Trip

Museums are the repository of our culture. Museums are the distilled essence of our history, our history of art and artifact, our ideas, our music and our philosophy. The opportunity for students to visit museums is an important part of their educational process.

Even the most humble and regional museum contains the bones of the community in which it resides, in the artifacts it contains, from a few items from the community pioneers to the artwork of the community’s artists. The reminders of a communities beginning as well as an awareness of the current sources of inspiration for a community’s artists ground the student and help them understand the passions and preferences of the place they live.

Placing objects in their historical context is important. I had a recent conversation with an internationally known artist and authority on art while viewing silver dinnerware from the ruins of Pompeii. I felt that these could have conceivable been used as everyday items but he corrected me. The Romans were well aware of the value of these items, made of what are to us precious metals; these were the equivalent to the Roman’s of today’s Rolex watches. They are signifiers of wealth, status and power. Any Timex can tell time and any ceramic plate can carry food but silver platters were important as signals of the host’s importance and were made beautiful for that reason.
In local community museums where the exhibits carry the artifacts of the communities beginnings one can see many ordinary tools such as quilts, saddles, kitchen implements and combs and brushes. One may see devotional objects, statues, candelabra and pictures. All of these items, objects of work and objects of religious devotion are tools for the community. So for the student viewer it is important to remind them that everything they are seeing are tools, evidence of importance like the more finely wrought decorative items, utilitarian items devoid of decoration that are used in the tasks of day to day life and devotional items, tools of a communities cohesion and the relationship with the mysteries of being alive.
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Another aspect of taking young people to museums is the fact that it is very likely that this will be their first encounter with their larger culture (besides of course pop culture) and their first real encounter with art. The viewing of art on television, books and slide shows is a very different experience than viewing a painting in a gallery or a statue in a garden. Detail, color and size are all significantly different and more imposing when the encounter is in person.  This can be an epiphany for the prepared student. For one thing, seeing art exhibited in a museum can bring the students attention to the idea that art is important and significant. Communities provide resources to create, acquire and display works of art. Art is important, an idea that may be new to many students working alone, using art as a vehicle for self-discovery and self-exploration without really understanding that others may be interested in their work. Antiquity is also an aspect of art that students should be informed of, familiar with movies and faux classical art in shopping malls, the student standing before an actual statue from classical Rome and be told – this is the real thing, an object hat actually existed in the time of Jesus, can fill a student  with awe and wonder. To encounter the real, the old and the surprising and impressively large can alter world views and help young alienated students feel a connection with the world and begin to find a heritage and place in the world complimentary to the connection through popular culture. The Goths were an actual Germanic people (even if the work of Edward Gorey has more influence on this movement), William Blake was a Romantic, the Dada school flourished in Europe at the beginning of the 20th Century; these are a few of the many influences that shape and direct students today and can best be explored with a visit to a museum.

The issue this raises has to do with the place of culture in the increasingly globalize d world. What is the meaning of cultural colonialism in the context in museums where quite easily the curator can consciously or unconsciously invest their own prejudices into the fashion an exhibit is set up. This last year I visited the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum, both museums have wonderful multi media exhibits of African art. The exhibits demonstrated, by way of film, dancing and ritual using artifacts similar to the artifacts on display. Both museums are in areas with significant African-American populations and these exhibits clearly serve the community where they reside.

Putting aside the message that artwork does not have an author by not attempting to provide an attribution for much of the work on display. The Seattle Art Museum provided more modern context, masks worn by mannequins in modern dress and demonstrations of the use of traditional motifs in modern work. The Brooklyn Museum of Art focuses on more traditional aspects in the exhibit, almost as if African is a static culture free from foreign influence, an Africa of the imagination. I believe the representation of the Seattle Art Museum, placing art in proper modern context is most appropriate for students as art does not stand still, it is dynamic and fluid adapting itself to changes in society and the larger environment and students should know this and be prepared to integrate what they see into their own work and efforts.

So a visit to an art museum should include: Discovering the importance of art, the origins of culture and inspiration of students work through the exposure to and different ideas.

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Read our November essay: Art Materials Safety
Read our September essay: Hyperrealism
Read our August essay: Art is Work
Read our April essay: Teaching Creativity
Read our December essay: New Art Resources on the Web
Read our November essay: Change the World - One Work of Art at a Time
Read our October essay: Primitive Art is Not Art
Read our August essay: Shadow as Metaphor in Art
Read our June essay: PBS' How Art Made the World
Read our May essay: What College Art Teachers Expect from High School Students
Read our April essay: Technological Innovations in Art Educations
Read our March essay: Does Handwriting have a Future?
Read our February essay: Copyright and trademark for the art educator
Read our January essay: Counseling your students on choices for Higher Education
Read our December essay: Why Teaching Visual Art is now a Necessity
Read our November essay: Teaching Collage as Social Critic
Read our October essay: The Place of the Body in Education
Read our September essay: The Ways Artists Support Themselves
Read our August essay: Why students should copy the great works
Read our July essay: Hidden Clues in Works of Art
Read our June essay: The Mathematics of Art
Read our May essay: The Importance of School Art Competitions
Read our January essay : Art History and the Internet
Read our March essay: Ink Jet Printers and the Color Wheel:

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