MTS Gets 'Technosavvy' at the New Museum (Part 1)

The Team embracin' the sun

On a gloriously sunny Thursday afternoon, Museum Teen Summit beamed through the glass window panels of the New Museum. Sitting at the cafe's long, white table and tree stumps (literally!), our team flashed out the notebooks and laptops, and hopped onto our research projects. Here is a list of our individual/group investigations:

• Marketing: outreach strategies through various platforms 
• Art Education: transferring teaching from the classroom over to a museum
• Barrier Between Museum and Teens: the common excuses for not visiting a museum
• Drawing the 'Non-Artist' Teen into Museums: uncovering and inspiring the artist inside of them
• Teen Programs: inquiring enjoyable aspects of a museum teen program through the eyes of a teen
• Teen Events/Nights: the key strategies to hosting a hallmark teen night 

Through a wide array of surveys and personal interviews, MTS will question fellow teens and educators to lead into our common, most perplexing question: Why aren't teens in museums? 

Han Haacke, Blue Sail

And as always, we never leave a museum untouched. From the neon green elevator MTS walked into the New Museum's master exhibition of contemporary art: Ghosts in the Machine. Contemporary works of Han Haacke, Robert Breer, and Otto Piene reel museum goers into a dystopia where modern technology is seen as both ruinous and beneficial to society. Through means of everyday science, such as kinetic and potential energy, the showcase transforms conventional technology into objects of fluidity. There is, indeed, a connection between technology and art. 

Like the many artists shown Ghosts in the Machine, Museum Teen Summit uses technology to connect to a wider audience... In Milwaukee!

To be continued...

-- Ramona Venturanza