Wednesday, February 29, 2012

NAEA Museum Preconference



Thanks again to everyone who attended our workshop session at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Museum Preconference. Also, special thanks to NAEA, Metropolitan Museum of Art for hosting us, and Marit and Angelina for helping us put together everything! Our workshop dealt with engaging teens through the use of social media. Each of us (teens) will be posting our debriefs here shortly.

In case you missed our presentation today or would like to go back on some things we metnioned, we'd like to put our Powerpoint, notes and our take away sheet to download! Share it with yourself, other educators or anyone interested!
Notes
Powerpoint
Take Away Sheet


If you have any lingering questions, comments or just want to greet us, you can find us at museumteensummit@gmail.com. 

Happy social-networking,
Museum Teen Summit
twitter.com/nyc_mts
facebook.com/nycmuseumteensummit


Sunday, February 26, 2012

MTS Museum Meet Up Debrief

The Super Art Museum was really great at letting us host an event in their space!

First, we went around on a gallery tour with one of the artists exhibiting at the SAM. It was really interesting to hear the inspiration behind his work, as well as take questions and listen to our reactions as we went around the space.

At the end of the gallery tour, we were lead to the SAM Educational Center to make some artwork based on the artist's exhibit. We loved getting to work with a real artist and play around with some materials. We all walked away with a piece of artwork, and couldn't be happier.

After the art-making session, there were some refreshments and the SAM gave us passes to come back again! Then, one of the educators told us that the night wasn't over just yet.

For the last activity, we all created an interpretive dance based on everything we did and saw that day. We've never done anything like that!


Come join MTS at our Museum Meet Up

Thursday March 1st, 2012 from 3-8 pm  at the Super Awesome Museum

Get ready to get your hands dirty as you make some artwork inspired by the upcoming exhibition at the SAM, after getting a gallery tour of the museum. There will be an artist guest speaker who will be leading the gallery tour. Stay for some free food, passes so that you can visit again to see things for yourself, and have a dance off to end the evening!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Museum of Modern Art 2/6

Crumpled paper from Sanja Ivekovic: Sweet Violence
This week, MTS met at the Museum of Modern Art. With many of us recently affiliated with their teen programs (including Marit!), it was an exciting to be back in the beautiful Cullman Education and Research Center. We took a quick look through the atrium space and the recently updated contemporary galleries. The atrium is currently occupied with the Sanja Ivekovic: Sweet Violence show. Centered is a shrine like sculpture topped with a gold piece, and scattered across the grey tiled floors are crumpled pieces of paper.

We strolled through the contemporary galleries in search for the Felix Gonzalez-Torres pieces, which evolved from a corner pile of candies into an entire room of silver wrapped pineapple treats. How could we resist? Toward the end of our exploration we found the Keith Haring piece. Absolutely stunning. We cannot wait to see his show at the Brooklyn Museum. At the smack middle of the room is Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank by Jeff Koon, which we saw in the Hennessy Youngman video How to Make An Art this summer.


Walking through the Keith Haring and Jeff Koon pieces
Unfortunately our adventures were cut short by the museum's 5:30pm close time. We gathered back in the classroom to meet with Calder Zwicky, who conducts the teen and community outreach programs at MoMA. Calder described the teen programs in three tiers:
  1. Art Underground - or simply teen night. These happen every other Friday (next one on 2/17). They are at a first come first serve basis and all you need to attend is a student ID. It is open to all teens in New York City. 
  2. In The Making - Requires an application. Studio based classes which generally are designed to work with a special exhibition or a portion of the museum's permanent collection. 
  3. Museum Studies/Art Conservation/Cross Museum Collective - Required application. Alumni only programs which are much more involved in the behind-the-scenes of museums.
All info on these programs can be found here.

Calder also runs community programs which work with organizations around the city, such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, to provide an internship style opportunity to help these specific teens learn about the job opportunities in the art world.

The last portion of our session was all about the National Art Education Association Conference on February 29th. We will be giving a presentation on what we do, what we've found, and how to use technology to promote outreach to teens. Our target goals to are present:
  • What are the miconceptions of teens and museums?
  • What social networking means to teens? How is it used?
  • How to take a goal oriented approach to social networking with a teen audience?
  • Tutorials on setting up/expanded social network footprint. 
We are extremely excited to be presenting at these conference in front of art educators from around the nation. We hope that the information culminated since our summer sessions will be able to help some programs expand through media use.

Follow our Twitter, like our Facebook for #teensinmuseums, updates on teen programs and art!

-MTS Team

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Tuesday we visited the Jewish Museum and had a personal tour by the Teen programs coordinator Jamie Auriemma exploring the galleries that hosed the most impressive Hanukkah lamp collection one could ever imagine. Like many art and cultural institutions the Jewish museum reminds one how beautiful religion, history and culture really is. Museum summit teens where even invited to explore their newest exhibition “Composed: Identity, Politics, Sex” a small gallery space featuring photographs that focuses on the constant battle we all encounter of self identity. In the sense of where are place is in history, present day society and the connections between the two. Noted as Jamie’s favorite pieces Debbie Grossman (American, b. 1977) series of Photoshopped photographs from Russell Lee in 1940 in Pie Town, New Mexico, where Debbie re-wrote history to be an ideal place for herself. After some time to digest this topic I feel this is a lot of what teens in museum education do. We set out to re-write preconceptions about adolescents. To some professionals teenager is viewed as a dirty word, same way as almost all minorities where at one point. By having this opportunity to be involved with museum in any way there is always a space where your opinion is valued, in my experiences this is one of the most rewording parts about being part of MTS. ☺