Focus on Art, Books & Creativity at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Submitted by: Elisabeth Orengo, Program Intern, DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative
April 10th, 2019
Created in the 1960′s with a collection exclusively dedicated women’s art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) has more recently became an authentic laboratory and research center for art education. Over the years, the institution has increased its collaborative efforts to build a diverse array of educational opportunities. In addition to its contribution to the creation of the DC Collaborative, of which it is a founder member, the education team at NMWA has built Arts, Books & Creativity (ABC), that is a comprehensive program aiming to facilitate art integration into school curriculum.
The DC Collaborative would like to share an overview of the series of accomplishments that led to the high quality programs currently offered at NMWA. We have asked Director of Education Deborah Gaston, and Senior Educator in charge of Arts and Humanities for Every Students (AHFES) at NMWA Adrienne Gayoso, to present the creation and the implementation processes of ABC programs.
Deborah Gaston explained that two successive grants, allocated in 2003 and 2006 by the US Department of Education, facilitated the creation of ABC. First conceived as an art integration program for students supported by a research component for educators to evaluate the impact of their work, ABC has now been combined with a professional development program based on teacher participation. Each year, NMWA offers summer institutes to help teachers from all over the country “integrate the visual arts into the core curriculum”. Further, an advanced institute has been created at the request of participants willing to go even further in their approach to art integration. Lastly, NMWA has set up online education resources to extend learning opportunities all over the country.
Visible Thinking Routines
ABC’s programs include some of the Visible Thinking routines developed by Harvard Project Zero. Originally established at Lemshaga Akademi in Sweden, Visible Thinking is a research-based initiative aiming to enhance students’ thinking dispositions across subject matters. This “extensive and adaptable collection of practices” enables students to make better use of their skills in a variety of contexts. At the National Museum of Women in the Art, educators “select methodologies based on the developmental level(s) of the audience, the works [they] show, and the habits [they] hope to introduce and habituate,” Adrienne says.
Artworks often tell a story. That’s why many routines make use of this narrative power to engage students. In Beginning / Middle / End, artists are considered storytellers, and students try to figure out how the picture of a specific moment in time may refer to a whole story. Then, they use evidence based on what they see to imagine what happened before and what might happen after. Adrienne noticed that “children are innate storytellers, and this exercise allows them to express their creativity while practicing their evidential reasoning skills”.
Headlines i s a perfect routine to continue the work done with Beginning / Middle / End. For students, the exercise - that consists of generating titles for narrative works of art - is a way to feel engaged and get excited by the stories pictures may tell. For the educator, Headlines acts as an assessment tool enabling us “to see what students have synthesized and are taking away about the ‘essence’ of this artwork”.
See / Think / Wonder is the core routine of Harvard Project Zero and used often at NMWA. Three basic questions are used to enhance observation and interpretation skills: “What do you see?”, “What do you think about that?”, “What does it make you wonder?”. This is a helpful observation technique and makes sense out of objects in a variety of contexts that some teachers use it into their classrooms. In this case, the museum’s workshop become an opportunity for students to reinforce the practice of looking, inferring, and questioning in a new environment. For this reason, See / Think / Wonder is probably one of the most efficient art integration techniques.
Lastly, Colors / Shapes / Lines is particularly efficient way to start a conversation with young students, those with developmental challenges, or when students don’t seem receptive to the routines that are based on stories. As they focus on formal elements of art, students progressively enrich their descriptive vocabulary, while getting more familiar with the interpretation process.
Please visit Thinking Palette to get an overview of the practices.
Adrienne underlines that this practice is a very good way to discuss artworks in which color is essential, as in Amy Sherald’s paintings.
Amy Sherald, They Call Me Redbone but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake, 2009; Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of the artist and the 25th Anniversary of NMWA.
Amy Sherald at NMWA; Photo: Emily Haight, NMWA
More information about the exhibition is available in the article “Go Figure! Amy Sherald at NMWA” on the museum’s blog Broad Strokes.
Adapting to students needs
As well as thinking, creating is essential to learn, and the hands-on workshops are an integral part of ABC’s programs. NMWA was inspired by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, a non profit organization working to inspire a love of art and reading through picture books in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The merging of visual and language arts is a great opportunity to keep up learning while considering the direct parallel between images and texts, and thus reinforce the link between the museum experience and academic curriculum. At NMWA, this concept has been implemented through an “artists’ books” workshop: individually or as a team, students create their own books to reflect and recall their visit. Since every one of them is unique, the artist book is also a way to encourage students to identify and best use their own abilities. Moreover, artists’ books also employs a flexible education format allowing students to freely describe their experiences, emphasizing images or texts.
We hope you will find these resources helpful to your own educational practice, either in the classroom or outside of the school setting. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions about this article or connecting to NMWA staff.
