Museum as a resource final presentation

Running head: EXERCISE OF SELF-AWARNESS THROUGH ART

An exercise of self-awareness as part of understanding through Art Santiago Caride Teachers College, Columbia University

A&HA 5804 Museum as a Resource Instructional Technology and Media Fall 2016

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Running head: EXERCISE OF SELF-AWARNESS THROUGH ART

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Table of contents

Table of Contents I.

Personal Narrative: Describing an art-piece at El Museo del Barrio ...................................... 3

II.

Design of the Resource ........................................................................................................... 8 a. b. c.

Topic ................................................................................................................................................. 8 Learning goal .................................................................................................................................... 8 Intended audience ............................................................................................................................. 9

III. Museums and objects ............................................................................................................ 10 a. b. c.

Museo del Barrio ............................................................................................................................ 10 Metropolitan Museum of Art .......................................................................................................... 11 The Museum of Art and Design ..................................................................................................... 12

IV. Essential question #1............................................................................................................. 13 a.

Description of the resource ............................................................................................................. 13 Description ................................................................................................................................. 13 Interpretation .............................................................................................................................. 14 Contrast ...................................................................................................................................... 15 Awareness .................................................................................................................................. 15 b. Background Information ................................................................................................................. 15 i.

Museo del Barrio ........................................................................................................................ 15 ii. Metropolitan Museum of Art ..................................................................................................... 17 iii. The Museum of Art and Design ................................................................................................. 18 c.

Guiding questions ........................................................................................................................... 18 i. ii. iii. iv.

V.

Essential question #2............................................................................................................. 19 a. b.

Description of the resource ............................................................................................................. 20 Guiding questions ........................................................................................................................... 20

VI. References ............................................................................................................................. 21

Running head: EXERCISE OF SELF-AWARNESS THROUGH ART

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I. Personal Narrative: Describing an art-piece at El Museo del Barrio

The learning experience that I had and I want to underline as a resource of meaningful understanding was an exercise made at El Museo del Barrio in which learners, separated in pairs, should describe an art piece to his or her partner.

The event took place in an exhibition named Figure and form of El Museo del Barrio. This museums is a Latino Cultural institution located in the core of Manhattan. The museum has different collections and exhibitions of former latino residents of New York. The exhibition in question is called Figure and Form and has art pieces of lots of artists, among which are Antonio López, Julio Alpuy, David Antonio Cruz, Nemesio Antúnez, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Alessandra Expósito, Caio Fonseca, Louis Méndez and Ernesto Pujol. The museum has many artwork of Antonio López that fill more than five halls. In one of them, there are pencil drawings, drafts of other works that have vivid expressions of forms and figures. The museum educator divided the group in pairs, prior to enter the hall. One of them will close his or her eyes and the other will guide. The guide will choose one art-piece and try to describe it as details as possible. The “blind” partner should be situated facing the guide and giving his or her back to the artpiece. She or he would draw according to the instructions of the guide, trying -naturally- to be as faithful as possible to the drawing of the artist.

After five minutes or so the blind partner would show the drawing to the guide as the guide would show the art-piece to the blind partner. Usually both will be surprised with each other results: one with the interpretation of the guidance, and the other with the interpretation of the

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art-piece. Let’s try to analyse if this activity promotes an meaningful understanding and why. I will try to make a list of points that I found relevant about it.

Engaging. The activity was in first place fun. The idea of guiding someone who cannot see, telling your vision of the art-piece and comparing with the results was engaging. Both, guide and follower were curious about the other side of the coin: the former to see if his or her guidance was precise and clear, the former to see if the guidance was accurate to the art-piece. It did not take much time nor resources and made a bond between what the observer saw and the art-piece.

Rather than pass by the painting, the guide had to look deeper to see what is not clear to the naked eye and select the most accurate directions to describe the artwork. Even if is not part of the activity, both participants end up doing some analysis of their behaviour.

Empathetic. The activity had also some level of empathy that is one step of meaningful understanding.

The swift from what does it says? to what does this piece is telling me? In order to fix something in our memory we must transform it from knowledge to experience. If we repeat the activity with other participants, we can notice that everyone will describe differently the art-piece. Each participant use his or her words, choose one detail above others, begins describing the general idea or piece by piece. When the blind participants sees what was uncovered he or she is able not just to understand the art-piece, but to understand much more of the observer. The interpretation of the observer is uncovered as

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well. As the saying reminds us: What Peter says about John, says more about Peter that about John.

Challenging. The activity also covers a feature that enhances engagement and expression: it is challenging. When you see the guides describing the art-piece you cannot avoid noticing that most of them gesticulate with their hands what the say with their mouth. It is very difficult to explain an artwork, that usually escapes all kinds of logic, and express very different emotions in words. Like leashing what is impossible to grab. Imagine thinking about Dali, “A clock that is not a clock, somehow melted, hanging over a tree….” Should we try to express the same emotion or should we try to copy -like a computer- the same exact drawing? There is something chaotic yet amazing in this painting, how can I describe chaos? What the guide says does not make sense, should I draw it anyway or wait for more details to start? These are some challenging questions that both will face in the activity and will make them address the idea is impossible to be objective about what we describe, but we can be conscious of our prejudices yet.

Collaboration. The activity could be titled “Interpreting with others”. It requires a lot of taking, sharing and asking about the art-piece. This part of cross examination is very important to understand the guide’s view on the piece. Each member will have a shared responsibility on the final outcome so the describing is as much important as the drawing. Both are compelled to try to work together and make sure that the other understood or has enough information to proceed.

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Collaboration makes it also more engaging and enriching because at the end the finding of both will be gathered and what one saw may be enlightened by the view of his or her partner.

Contemplation. The activity requires a good exercise of contemplation, that is a way of seeing with the mind or thinking with the eyes. Following Armstrong (2000) aspects of contemplation we can (or must) exercise it deeply: noticing details, seeing the relation between parts, seizing the whole persisting on perceiving rather than one-time consumption and mutual absorption.

Again, another feature that enhances engagement. Contemplation is a way to approach the artwork and realize that we transform an object that is lying in front of us to an experience or mystery in which we are immersed.

Metacognition. The final part of the activity is crucial to make learning meaningful. There are several questions that both participants must make to each other. Why did you choose that detail to describe? Why did you draw that emotion or expression like that? What would be a better way to explain or express this feature? The questions that follow the drawing are part of a greater process of understanding the art and our perception of it. The artwork becomes an excuse to promote questions. “Art educators must help people to understand that it is with the formation of questions and pursuit of answers that we should initiate and carry out our essential investigations into the visual arts. Works of art and artifacts become sources for questions; issues in society and within one's self are seen as places of wonder; artmaking is perceived as an opportunity to wrestle with the imponderable elements of our lives...� (Bolin, 1996)

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Relevant. Something that relates to the museum itself is that is relevant to its community. The name, for start, means the “neighborhood museum” and is full of artwork of former residents of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It tells a story if that place and tries to give meaning to things that happen daily in the New York Latino community. The day we visited the museum, there was a DJ in the entrance as some kind of invitation to be part of the museum experience, to enjoy, to share and experience it. In Simon’s words “And so we sought, little by little, to understand what mattered to people in our community. To understand how we could replace our locked doors with ones that opened widely to our community and the cultural experiences they sought. We started experimenting, changing, and expanding our audiences and offerings. We did so flying a flag of relevance.” The activity was relevant because it was more about the participants that about the art. The art here is not like something in a pinnacle, guarded by security cameras, that is by its own meaningful and rich, from a certain past-era. On the contrary, it was reachable and fickle, it was a question hanging on the wall as a kick start for meaningful answers. The path requires openness and the risk of exposure. But this vulnerability of expressing openly what we see it makes it worthful and relevant. “While this mission awakened my appreciation for relevance, it also made me more aware of its limitations. Relevance is a paradox. It is essential; it gets people to pay attention, to walk in the door, to open their hearts. But it is also meaningless without powerful programming on the other side of the door. If the door doesn’t lead to valuable offerings, if nothing touches peoples’ hearts, interest fades. They don’t return. (Simon, 2016)”.

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II. Design of the Resource a. Topic The topic of this resource is the self-knowledge through art. According to Wiggins & McTighe (2005) self-knowledge is an important facet of understanding. We cannot teach to learn until we promote students to have self-knowledge by showing metacognitive awareness, using productive habits of mind, and reflecting on the meaning of the learning and experience.

b. Learning goal The main goal of the resource is to enhance in the learners the awareness of their own process of learning through art, how we construct meaning when facing reality. Objects can provide an easier way to describe their personalities and emotions through the process of projection rather than beginning to speak about themselves from scratch. Therefore, art as a refined way of expression provides a handful way to self-knowledge. In addition, learning is a social process and it is within community that it is enhanced and promoted. “Your students learn to combine their ideas with remarks from other students, add in the information you provide and their own

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research “discoveries” to construct a solid body of knowledge and create new ideas. All the while, they’re honing their thinking skills” (Schmidt, 2004).

In this process of self-awareness is important that the learner understand that he or she is not a passive spectator but a player immerse in an art creation. “Hololeptic contemplation, thus, links the experience of art to the wider demands of reflective life and suggests how, to a certain kind of person, the experience of art could be of prime private importance” (Armstrong, 2000). The art is not something in front of the observer, the observer is somebody inside the artist dynamic. c. Intended audience The target audience are high school students (~ 13 to 14 years old) that stage when they began to learn about their identity and grow in maturity. Students at this age acquire self-certainty, seeks for ideals to live by and define themselves. While there are different personalities without conflict, art can have different interpretations without problems either. “Bear in mind that multiple interpretations, even contradictory ones, work together to illuminate a work” (Hubard, 2007).

Running head: EXERCISE OF SELF-AWARNESS THROUGH ART

III. Museums and objects a. Museo del Barrio

Lรณpez, A. (1976). Montreal Olympics [Painting]. Museo del Barrio, New York.

Lรณpez, A. (1982). Portrait: Angelo Colon [Painting]. Museo del Barrio, New York.

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b. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Master of the Furies (Austrian). (17th century). Saint Sebastian [Sculpture]. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Colombian; Popayรกn. (Ca. 1660 (diadem) and ca. 1770 (arches)). Crown of the Andes [Crown].

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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c. The Museum of Art and Design

Wertheim, C., Wertheim, M., & Institute For Figuring. (2005). Crochet Coral Reef[Painting].

Toxic seas, The Museum of Art and Design, New York.

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IV. Essential question #1

a. Description of the resource The idea is to work with three images at a time. The activity has four stages: i.

Description

In the first stage the student must describe the art piece he or she sees as detailed as possible.

Here is important to know the difference between facts and interpretation. “Distinguish factual information from interpretive information. Facts are what people know to be true: This sculpture is made out of marble; Frank Gehry designed this building. By contrast, interpretations express the meaning or relevance that individuals find in a work: This work embodies hope in the face of destruction; that one celebrates the everyday. Interpretations are born when people make connections between what they see and what they know about art and life� (Hubard, 2007).

Prior to the description, the learners must spend time to contemplate. This moment may be helped with some information about the piece but not much, for that purpose the following point

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will give background info of each collection. We must let the art get inside ourselves. “On the other hand, the quality and virtue of contemplation may depend also upon what it is we are giving ourselves over to. We can visually contemplate anything which we can see; but do some objects reward this kind of attention more than others? The belief that it makes a difference what you contemplate relies upon the assumption that what you contemplate somehow gets inside you” (Armstrong, 2000).

The first impression is very important in terms of self-knowledge. It is the way in which the personality arises without filters or second thoughts. “When people write or speak the first word that comes to mind, they tap into their immediate response to the object. Much like detectives’ hunches, immediate responses are informed by things that viewers apprehend even before they can examine their impressions rationally. Immediate responses can thus be closely aligned with physical and emotional experiences: sharp, falling, isolation” (Hubard, 2007). ii.

Interpretation

The second stage needs more guidance. The intention of the author remains somehow unattainable but still our interpretation can serve us to understand more about ourselves.

Therefore, to channel the activity and avoid them to derail it is important to guide through questions the activity. “As educators in the visual arts we must recognize the importance of questions in the lives of those we work to educate. Such is the case for children and youngsters in public schools, as well as for adult learners, the elderly, museum patrons, the institutionalized, and the incarcerated.” (Bolin, 1996). The works of art become an excuse to make revealing questions, to inquire ourselves and try to make meaning. “Art educators must help people to understand that it is with the formation of questions and pursuit of answers that we should initiate and carry out our essential investigations into the visual arts. Works of art and artifacts

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become sources for questions; issues in society and within one's self are seen as places of wonder; artmaking is perceived as an opportunity to wrestle with the imponderable elements of our lives and an occasion to challenge the mysteries of ourselves and our world” (Bolin, 1996). iii.

Contrast

Once the learners made a description and can give an interpretation of the art piece is time to share, to contrast their impression. This requires a sense of respect for all the opinions and emotions expressed by every participant, openness and will to learn from others. “We implicitly promise visitors that our knowledge will guide their looking, and that, at the same time, we will respect the knowledge and life experience that they bring with them” (Burnham, 2005). iv.

Awareness

Lastly, it comes the time for awareness. What did this exercise tell us about ourselves and about others? The question must be an attitude not just an initiative, the inquire must be constant and deeper, with attention and respect. “By your insistence on multiple answers to the same question, you slowly convince kids that there is no one right answer. There are as many answers as there are minds in the room, and you’re desperately interested in all of them” (Schmidt, 2004).

If the resource is effective, it will show that museums are not window to the past or artist far from us but with our own present essence and personalities and facing the very shape of human emotions. “Every museum educator brings unique gifts to the art of teaching through works of art” (Burnham, 2005). b. Background Information i.

Museo del Barrio

Antonio Lopez was born in Utuado, Puerto Rico on February 11, 1943. The family migrated to New York City when Antonio was seven and he attended P.S. 77 on East 104th Street. To keep her son off the streets, Lopez’s mother, a seamstress, would ask him to draw flowers for her

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embroideries. He also helped his father, a mannequin maker, to apply make-up and stitch wigs on the figures. At the age of twelve, Lopez earned a scholarship to the prestigious Traphagen School of Fashion in New York, which provided Saturday programs for children. He went on to attend the High School of Art and Design. Upon graduation, Lopez was accepted to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Lopez went on to illustrate fashions for Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Times and eventually became a free-lance artist for many of the top fashion publications, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Andy Warhol’s Interview. He is known to have “discovered” or formed lasting friendships with women like Pat Cleveland, Tina Chow, Jerry Hall, Grace Jones and Jessica Lange. He collaborated with the noted designer Charles James, creating an illustrated inventory of Charles’ fashion designs (now in the collection of the Chicago History Museum).

With his friend and business partner, Juan Ramos, Lopez moved to Paris where they both worked with Karl Lagerfeld and many other designers.

Through his work, Lopez made great strides in exploring and representing the ethnic or racialized body within the world of high fashion. His imagery helped to develop and underscore a new canon of beauty throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He died in Los Angeles of complications related to AIDS on March 17, 1987 at the age of 44.

A team of art historians, scholars of fashion history, gender and communications studies and other experts will participate in the organization of this exhibition. The show’s co-curators are Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Curator at El Museo del Barrio and Amelia Malagamba-Ansótegui, a scholar from Arizona State University and University of Texas San Antonio. In 2003, Dr. Malagamba wrote an important essay on Antonio Lopez for the Smithsonian Institution, which

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continues to be a key text today for the ways in which it explores Antonio’s attentiveness to race, gender and the body. ii.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The "Crown of the Andes" was made to adorn a sacred image the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception venerated in Popayán cathedral, in the former Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada (now Colombia). An attribute of Mary's divine queenship, the gold crown is encircled by scrolls of acanthus leaves set with emeralds in blossom-shaped clusters that symbolize the Virgin's purity. The diadem, made in the mid-seventeenth century, is surmounted by four imperial arches made a little more than a century later. Pear-shaped emerald pendants are suspended beneath them and they are topped by a cross-bearing orb that signifies Christ's dominion over the world.

The crown is encrusted with nearly 450 emeralds, the largest one being a twenty-four-carat gemstone known as the "Atahualpa emerald."

Although the practice was controversial, it was common throughout the Catholic world to bestow lavish gifts, including jewels and sumptuous garments, on sculptures of the Virgin Mary. Such gifts, which exalted the Virgin and increased the splendor of her worship, were frequently offered by devotees who sought her intercession or wished to give thanks for it. In Popayán, the cult of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was promoted by a confraternity of believers who oversaw the care and ritual presentation of her image, which was crowned and carried in public procession on certain Marian feast days. The treasury safeguarded by the confraternity included not only this magnificent gold and emerald crown, but also a simpler gilt silver one, as well as jeweled rings, bracelets, earrings, silver chains, and strands of pearls.

The "Crown of the Andes" is considered one of the most important surviving examples of goldsmith work from colonial Spanish America. Notable for its rarity, richness, and exquisite

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craftsmanship, the crown represents the most distinctive artistic achievement of a locale whose wealth derived from the mining of gold and emeralds. iii.

The Museum of Art and Design

Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS celebrates the tenth anniversary of the “Crochet Coral Reef” (2005–present), an ongoing project by sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim and their Los Angeles–based organization, the Institute for Figuring. Mixing crocheted yarn with plastic trash, the work fuses mathematics, marine biology, feminist art practices, and craft to produce largescale coralline landscapes, both beautiful and blighted. At once figurative, collaborative, worldly, and dispersed, the “Crochet Coral Reef” offers a tender response to the dual calamities facing marine life: climate change and plastic trash.

This exhibition consists of three main “habitats.” A giant Coral Forest and a collection of miniature Pod Worlds represent the diversity of living corals through the varying textures, colors, and forms of crocheted yarn and beads. A Bleached Reef and a brand new Toxic Reef serve as invocations of dying corals, while The Midden—four years’ worth of the Wertheims’ own domestic plastic trash—constitutes a deeply personal response to the issue of plastic waste in the oceans, including human-made phenomena such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. c. Guiding questions 1. How much of what you see talks about the art piece and how much talks about you?

2. What kind of emotions arise in your soul when you are confronted to it?

3. Is there a proper way to describe it?

4. Can you think what was the artist thinking or willing when he/she did that?

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V. Essential question #2

“It was some time around that point in my life as a teacher that I began to realize that, as far as I could see, the major reason for studying history was to learn about our past and thus understand something of the dimensions of our present and the possibilities of our future. But in order for this to work for my students, they had to perceive the history that we studied as their history. For most students that you ever taught, and, when you get right down to it, for most of your students as well, history is not “history in the great tradition” but the history of ordinary people. This need not limit the scope of your whole course of study, but it certainly does determine the starting point and the overall perspective.” (Shuh, 2008) The main goal of this second questions is to understand the importance of relating their experiences gathered in the museum as part of their own identity building. This question hits the

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core of the constructivist approach by asking what is the difference between what we understand about the art-piece and the factual information about it. a. Description of the resource The activity may have two stages; it has some parallelism with the former EQ but instead of comparing with others the purpose of the activity is to reflect on the learner’s own changes towards the art-piece when the information of it is revealed. The most important part of the activity is to consider the path that led the student to make a certain description of the art-piece.

The activity requires decomposition of the notion that are built in the learner’s mind. b. Guiding questions 1. Do you think that the meaning is there to grab or you give meaning to the art?

2. What would you say is important to you about the art-piece? Is the hard-work? The ancient materials? Is the beauty? What makes you say that?

3. In terms of personal value, what is the difference between a museum, a fair and a window shop?

4. Why do you think you describe the art-piece like that?

5. What is your history with the art-piece? How the art-piece can be related to you as part of your own history?

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VI. References Armstrong, J. (2000). Move closer: An intimate philosophy of Art (pp. 81-105). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bolin, P. (1996). We are what we ask. Art Education, 49 (5), 6-10.

Burnham, R., & Kai-Kee, E. (2005). The art of teaching in the museum. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 39(1), 65-76.

Hubard, O. (2007). Productive information: Contextual knowledge in Art museum education. Art Education, 60 (4), 17-23.

Hubard, O. (2007). Complete engagement: Embodied response in Art museum education. Art Education, 60 (6), 46-53.

Lopez, A. (1995). Antonio 60-70-80: Three Decades of Fashion Illustration. Thames and Hudson.

Schmidt, L. (2004). Secret #5: Great teachers don’t take no (or yes) for an answer. Teaching by asking instead of telling. In Classroom Confidential: The 12 Secrets of Great Teachers (pp.

91-112). Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Shuh, J. H. (1999). Teaching yourself to teach with objects. The educational role of the museum, 2, 80-91.

Simon, N. (2016). The Art of Relevance. Museum 2.0. Retrieved October 14, 2016 from http://www.artofrelevance.org/read-online/ Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Ascd.