Thursday, December 14, 2006

The Decent Docent


Congratulations to me! On tuesday, I finished a twelve week class preparing me to be a volunteer docent at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. For the last three months I have been gaining instruction on principles of art and design, philosophies behind contemporary art, and strategies for working with different groups of people including different age groups (kindergarten trough adult) and disabilities. I had to write a paper on a particular piece of art in the museum, Romare Bearden's collage Serenade, linking its elements of design to its interpretation. And for the last few weeks I have been creating my final exam - a practice tour linking works of art from all three exhibits around a central theme of symmetry. I have incorporated works by artists like Bearden, Paschke, Kahlo, Oldenbourg, sculpture by Sol LeWitt and Alyson Schotz, and photographs by Klein. I have to take the education department through the tour. If I pass, I will be ready to start giving my own tours to various school groups, adult groups, and special tours.

I'm actually pretty excited about it, to get people to talk about what they see in a piece of art and reorient them to the things that they might want to look at. Strangely enough, I'm looking forward to the school groups. I remember how interested in looking at art I was at that age. It would be really cool to spark an interest or make a connection with the kids, get them to come back, and remind them that even as a kid they can look at a piece of art and just voice their opinion about it. Art is so cool.

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