Grand Reopening and Community Partnerships.

For the duration of the Fall semester, I will continue working at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art alongside the wonderful members of the museum's education department. I am lucky enough that the museum will be reopening in the next week and I will get to see how programs typically operate at the Carter. Since various sections of the museum have been closed for renovations the last six months, the programs the education department have hosted have been mostly held offsite which has limited the amount of people that could attend. I am hoping this semester that I can learn more about program development and become better at writing lesson plans. I will have ample chances to try my hand at it as I will be writing some of the lessons for the spring After-school and girl scout programs. I am really excited about the latter as I have not written or seen any programs that are formed in partnership with organizations like the girl scouts and I am interested to see how the museum is able to connect its collection to what scouts are doing. 

I am also hoping that my major project at the museum is successful. I will be designing and holding workshops at high schools around Fort Worth. The workshops are born out of a recent partnership with the Tarrant County Black Genealogical and Historical Society and the Amon Carter. The genealogical society will be holding a juried art show for local artists and students in the spring. My workshop is suppose to be for students that are interested in entering the show so they have a clear idea about the theme and how they can approach it in their art. I am in the early stages of planning it and have mostly been looking into which artworks I think would be helpful for the students to see before they start creating their own work for the show. The theme is the fight for Africans Americans to have a right to vote during the Civil Rights Movement. The head of the genealogical society would like me to focus of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and struggle for African-Americans to freely exercise their right to vote. I want to see if I can also include some art-making activities as I want to give the students a chance to start working out their ideas on paper and they don't have to just sit still for the entire time after already sitting through their classes. I might contact the schools that are participating to see what students have already covered in their classes so I have an idea about how much I can go into the history. Although, my biggest concerning is trying to make it meaningful for the kids that are participating. Not only is this an event that happened decades ago and they might not have a connection to, but most, if not all of the kids that will be attending the workshop, are not voting age. I have time though to figure this all out. 

I hoping to that I get more responsibilities in the incoming months as the education department is a little understaffed. Especially in community outreach as a few members will be switching to other departments or leaving the coming months.