Yesterday Belt Line Elementary School brought sixty of their students for a visit to the DMA! The group was split into three, with talented full-time educators at the DMA heading each tour. I got to work with Danielle to give the Recipe for Art tour. The students were brought to three different artworks in the galleries, and at each one they learned about a different "ingredient" used to make an artwork.
For example, at The Divers by Fernand Leger (above), Danielle introduced the kids to line. We talked about wiggly lines, loopy lines, straight lines, and zigzag lines. They used their fingers to makes lines in the air to show what each line looked like and then told the educator what kinds of lines they saw in the artwork. After the group discussion, each student pulled out their recipe book - a small notebook with a few pages - to make a drawing focusing on line. At the other two artworks students learned about color and shape, and they make corresponding drawings on different pages of their book.
As a new intern, the unexpected thing that I learned on this tour was the importance of knowing where all of the bathrooms are in a museum. Since the students were quite young, several of them needed to go during the tour. I was very familiar with the bathrooms by my computer, but I had not thought to locate all of them in the galleries. After the tour, I went to the visitors services desk, grabbed a map, and practiced getting from different places in the galleries to the bathrooms. As simple and silly as this is, I'm glad I will have that information for the future!
Yes! I am glad you learned that lesson early in your tenure at the DMA, Annette! I think that "where is the bathroom?" is probably the most common question that anyone, at any level of the museum, probably gets on a daily basis :) Glad to hear you've made yourself an expert!
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