Art museum school program draws students

 

 

 

 

 

Faculty member develops curriculum Dropping by the art museum just to see what’s on exhibit can be a wonderful, serendipitous experience. But there is something to be said for advance planning, too. This fall, the Museum of Art/WSU is making available online resources to help any visitor, but especially teachers, get more out of their museum experience. The Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids program helps bring students and their teachers to the museum, and a new online curriculum program is making it much easier for them to prepare for the visit.   Last spring and summer, Pauline Sameshima, an assistant professor in the College of Education, researched Australian Aboriginal art, collected online resources and then created a digital packet of materials that includes information about Australia and Aboriginal art, lesson plans, and pre- and post-visit assessments. The activities are connected to the appropriate National Content Standards or Washington Essential Academic Learning requirements (EALR).   Sameshima, a working artist who teaches arts integration and curriculum theory, helps pre-service teachers learn to incorporate art into all areas of the curriculum. In past years, her students have created lesson plans that complemented museum exhibits, but those projects were less extensive than what Sameshima has created for the Aboriginal exhibit.   The art exhibition curriculum project is being funded by a grant from Wells Fargo. Sameshima is already at work on lesson plans and activities to accompany the museum’s upcoming show, Seattle artist Claudia Fitch’s multimedia exhibit that opens Jan. 15.   To view the lesson plans for Aboriginal art, click here.

PULLMAN – For Tammy Mendoza’s sixth grade class at Tekoa Elementary School, the field trip to WSU Pullman has become an annual event made possible by the Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids program.

 

Sponsored by the Museum of Art/WSU, the program offers funding for teachers at schools within 100 miles of WSU to bring their students to campus to visit the museum and participate in whatever other activities they arrange.

 

One day last month, Mendoza’s students were part of a group of about 100 Tekoa students in first through sixth grades who visited campus. They spent the morning at the museum, exploring and discussing the exhibit of contemporary Australian Aboriginal art, and the afternoon visiting other parts of campus. One group got a lesson in food science, Mendoza said, and the other group participated in a scavenger hunt at the Conner Museum, the largest public collection of birds and mammals in the Pacific Northwest.

At the art museum, Mendoza said, Curator Keith Wells did a wonderful job of drawing students in and helping them appreciate the art.

 

“We’ve had him every year,” Mendoza said. “He’s awesome. He’s somebody you’d want to have speak to your class.”

 

The Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids program was initiated in 2003 through private donations. In 2006, a gift of $25,000 by Gene Rosa, the Edward R. Meyer Professor of Natural Resource & Environmental Policy, created an endowment for the program, which ensures it will continue in perpetuity.

“I wanted to introduce the excitement of the visual arts to young people who, because of their more isolated location, might never get exposed to an art museum setting nor to world class art,” Rosa said. “What better way to accomplish this than to bus school children in the areas surrounding Pullman to the Museum of Art?”

Chris Bruce, director of the Museum of Art/WSU, said the endowment has been enormously beneficial, but his staff constantly is looking for more money to expand the program. This year the museum also received a grant from the Inland Northwest Community Foundation.

 

“Every year the money for this program is drawn down to zero,” he said. “Because we bring students to campus to experience art, they are able to experience so much more. As far as we know, we are the only program bringing young people to campus and allowing them to explore a major research university.”

 

For information about donating to the Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids program, click here. 

 

For many young people in eastern Washington, visits to the WSU museum might be their only face-to-face exposure to exceptional contemporary art. The Museum of Art/WSU is the only dedicated art museum within a nearly 300 mile radius. While the Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane exhibits regional artists along with regional history and artifacts, the next closest dedicated art museums are in Boise and Seattle.

Another difference, said Debby Stinson, the museum’s public relations and marketing manager, is that the Museum of Art/WSU does not charge admission. The museum’s mission is to contribute to and enhance the educational and cultural life of the university, she said, and also reach out to the wider communities of Pullman and all of eastern Washington. The Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids program helps the museum do just that.

 

Pullman teacher Sheryl Nelson wasn’t sure what her first grade students would make of the Aboriginal art. Somewhere between representational and abstract art, the paintings are enigmatic.

 

When Nelson previewed the exhibit, she said, her first thoughts were, “What is it? What does it mean?”

In advance of their visit, Nelson and her WSU student teacher Jennifer Quinn used some of the materials made available by the museum (see accompanying article) to talk with their students about symbols that are common to Aboriginal art. With a little bit of an introduction, the students were off and running.

 

“They were telling me, ‘I see this…’” Nelson said. “Or, ‘Here’s a snake…. This is a group of people gathered.’

 

“They seem to be a little bit more open to seeing things in art than adults,” she said.

 

Nelson said the visit to the museum fit perfectly with a unit Quinn was teaching on Australia. After the museum visit, students created their own artwork using some of the design patterns they saw at the museum.

 

For Oakesdale teacher Jason Reed, Australia was outside the regular curriculum for his fifth and sixth graders, but he was happy to include it when he learned about the museum exhibit. Preparing for the visit became a collaborative effort with other school colleagues, including the art and music teachers.

 

Reed has been bringing his students to the museum ever since the Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids started, he said. The first year they viewed the exhibit and then headed back to school, but since then they’ve made a day of it, with tours of the WSU Creamery and other activities.

 

This year, he said, “We basically tried to make it a college experience.”

 

After visiting the museum, the students walked across campus to see fraternity and sorority houses on College Hill. Then they walked over to Bohler Gym, where several student-athletes from the women’s basketball team talked with Reed’s students. Former football player and recent grad Kenny Alfred happened by, Reed said, and he ended up inviting the students to run through the tunnel at Martin Stadium.

 

“I was really very pleased with just how friendly the student athletes were,” said Reed, a former student athlete himself. Reed, who graduated from WSU in 1994, played intercollegiate baseball.

 

Reed’s students also toured Lighty Student Services and talked with a former Oakesdale student who is a freshman at WSU. Visiting the museum and then touring the campus is extremely valuable Reed said, because it gets students thinking about college and what’s possible in their own lives.

 

They probably wouldn’t be able to make the trip without support from the Buy-a-Busload-of-Kids program, he said.

 

The Aboriginal art will be on exhibit through Dec. 11.