Pre-Visit

At the end of  September, my fourth grade classes were fortunate enough to receive a scholarship field trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art’s 2008 International. We experimented with pre-visit activities in preparation for our tour. For example, students used the website to gigapan various pieces, and listened to interviews by the works’ creators. One computer was used with an LCD projector and speakers. Afterwards, students researched recent blogs during class time using the same equipment. In addition, they examined the formal properties of installation art as well as some concepts behind the International’s theme, “Life on Mars.”  Studio Tour I opted for the "Everyday Materials, Everyday Life” tour, which focused on exactly that material. Some pieces the students viewed were, I Wish Your Wish (Rivane Neuenschwander), Just a Bit More (Ranjani Shettar), Three Kinds (Haegue Yang),  Untitled (Earth Drawing I) (Paul Thek), and Untitled (Barry McGee), among others. After the guided tour, all students gathered in the studio to apply the concepts they had investigated. Museum educators facilitated the lesson with differentiated, or tiered, instruction. The objectives were left open in order for all to succeed, yet challenging enough for higher level students to remain engaged. The project opened with a survey of students’ everyday activities. These items were listed and identified in terms of their sensory properties (sight, sound, texture, taste, smell). After careful consideration (and charted plans of attack), students illustrated their activity either two or three dimensionally.   Post Visit Lesson / Unit on Installation Art Upon returning from the museum in October and November, students wrote blogs about their experiences. It was truly an effective way for me to witness all the undertones that students had synthesized; thoughts that they either would not have shared with the group verbally, or I wouldn’t have thought to ask. I was amazed by the remarkable eloquence that young students can possess while drawing connections. In addition, each class began to construct part of a large installation for the school’s first floor hallway. Their work examined the interactions between people and nature in positive, negative, and interesting ways. The project began as a few lessons in aesthetics, and eventually grew into a unit of art history, production, criticism, and aesthetics.  Students were introduced to the unit through a critical examination of the ways in which people interact with our planet. Emphasis was placed on how the students could illustrate those relationships visually. A discussion about recycling was incorporated by using everyday items as art materials. Afterwards, students articulated their ideas individually with the understanding that all works would be exhibited together as an installation. This installation was hung like a maze, or labyrinth, of newspaper sheets. Fourth graders then analyzed the concepts and history of the cretan maze via an interactive Powerpoint that I created. In order to further this research, students created two small scale mazes themselves, and calculated a life size maze together. This life size “walk-through” maze was constructed in a separate room. View pictures of their finished installation, as well as the process, here. References www.cmoa.orgwww.google.comwww.math.sunysb.edu/~tony/mazeswww.plum.lib.il.us/yp_teacherlinks.shtml