What did I learn while doing my internship at the Kimbell Art Museum.

Well, I found that I didn't really enjoy meetings that much, kinda time wasters mostly, but maybe that's why people like them, you can sit around, drink coffee and BS.  Kinda cool, I guess, beats paving a road in the Texas heat, that's for sure.  I know sometimes they are definitely necessary to get feedback and to discuss certain things, but if it's just an informational situation, I think an email would really work better, just tell me what you want and let me do it, simple.  Working with children was definitely fun, I don't have any (that I know of), but they were really fun to be around and I enjoyed watching them make art and have fun with their parents and brothers and sisters.  I wrote a really great lesson plan that everyone enjoyed and I think got really great results.  We read a children book called The Iridescence of Birds about Henri Matisse.  I had the story read in front of L' Asie, painted by Matisse in 1946, then we went to the studio to do an activity that was written with children 4-6 in mind.  At the end of Matisse's career he invented "drawing with scissors", cutting out painted paper, arranging it on a background then adhering it onto the surface to create beautiful and colorful collage pieces.  I had 4 colors of colored paper, as well as black, glue sticks and scissors, then rolled out a 3' x 10' piece of white butcher paper onto the table.  The children and their parents used scissors and their fingers to cut and tear the colored paper into all kinds of fun shapes, then we glued them onto the white paper and created 2 really colorful and fun murals.  After we finished each mural, the children named them and they were quite hilarious and poignant, very clever little creatures those children.  Everyone very much enjoyed the activity, viewing the painting and the story, definitely something I had never done before, but I found it very fulfilling and successful and enjoyed creating the program very much.  It was great to be able to walk around the museum, looking at the art and being able to get a little closer than the normal patron can get, it really helps to have a badge and a clipboard like you are on OFFICIAL business!  I enjoyed helping with research and doing background information gathering on upcoming activities and trying to make the best out of the different materials that we have and how to repurpose materials from past activities to make new ones.  I was involved in KimbellFEST, Kimbell Teen Night, and multiple Saturday drop in studios for children and their families, all very interesting and fun.  It's a bit different for me, being that I'm so far the only male that they have had in the education department as well as the only studio major, everyone else has been either art ed. or art history.  They did find me very useful at building examples and prototypes and I can lift things heavier than 50 pounds and reach the top shelf, so I'm definitely useful in my own way!  I had a truly wonderful experience here over the summer, met some really great people, saw some AMAZING art every day and aside from the heat and traffic riding back and forth, it was a really fantastic summer.  I'm looking forward to being back in my studio again, working on projects and once more being creative, I find that it's what I'm best at and I need to try and contribute to giving the art ed. and art history majors something to study!  I hope everyone had a great experience like I did and I will definitely remember it for years to come and hope that it helps me out in my career and beyond.