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Beyond the Classroom
Two outreach
programs venture beyond traditional settings to engage people of all ages
and abilities in art and natural history.
Most days during the school year, the halls of Carnegie
Museums of Pittsburgh ring with
the sounds of children on field trips.
As many as 6,500 schoolchildren visit the Oakland
museums and the Science Center
on a busy school day. However,
thousands more children—and adults—are reached through off-site programs
hosted by the museums. “We are proud
that our outreach programs have achieved a high level of integration into
many communities,” says Carnegie Museums’ president Ellsworth Brown. “The programs reach a very diverse range
of people in a variety of community settings.” Two of these programs are described
below.
[PHOTO; CAPTION—Artist-educator (Jenni Stephens [or]
Olivia Kissel) guides children from St. Stephen School in Hazelwood in an
art project as part of Stories in Art.]
Stories in Art
For most children, visiting an art museum can be
intimidating. What should they make
of all the objects in so many different styles, sizes, shapes, and
colors? For many parents, the visit
can be just as—if not more—intimidating as they contemplate how they can
they help their children understand and appreciate the works of art.
In the past decade, Carnegie Museum of Art has developed
several child-friendly programs to make the museum a more welcoming place
for families. One of these programs
is Stories in Art, a
collaborative effort between the museum and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
that is fully funded by outside sources.
In 18 branch libraries and some schools, about 3,000 children
a year are introduced to art and literature through an innovative
combination of storytelling, observation and discussion, and art
projects.
At a recent program for 15 third and fourth graders at St.
Stephen School
in Hazelwood, the theme is “fruit.”
Carnegie Museum of Art artist-educator Jenni Stephens reads Anansi and the Talking Melon, all
about a little spider who fools other animals into believing that a melon
can speak.
Then, artist-educator Olivia Kissel shows the children a
slide of a work of art from the museum’s collection, Mary Cassatt’s
impressionistic 1891 oil painting titled Young Women Picking Fruit, and asks them to describe what they
saw. Nearly every hand shoots
up. “That one lady looks like she’s
thinking hard about something,” says Manny.
“They look like they’re from a real, real long time ago. They’re dressed like my
great-grandmother,” comments Reggie.
Francesca thinks that the artist probably painted outdoors.
Now it’s time for the children to become the
artists. Jenni and Olivia guide them
in making their own impressionistic pictures of fruit by tearing and
overlaying different colored pieces of tissue paper. No scissors, and
no rules about the colors and shapes of fruits.
“This program makes the children really look at works of
art and think like artists,” says the fourth-graders’ teacher, Paula
Heberling. “They learn the
vocabulary of art and they’re more aware of the different styles of art and
the different types of media an artist can use.” Adds her colleague, third-grade teacher
Nancy Hurey, “We don’t have tons of funds for materials. This program adds variety to our
curriculum.”
After five or six sessions, when the children have
become familiar with the names and works of major artists and have gained
confidence in their own ability to create art, they and their families
receive free transportation and admission for a visit to the Museum
of Art. “The children get so
excited when they see the actual works of art,” says Jenni. “You hear them shout, ‘I know that
picture!” At the end of their visit,
they receive free passes for another visit.
Stories in Art,
which was first offered at the libraries for walk-in visitors and then for
grade-school groups, has become so popular in the seven years since its
founding that recently it has begun to branch out to age groups other than
adolescents. The program is now
presented to pre-school children at the Mt.
Washington library branch and
teen parents enrolled in a high-school equivalency degree program at Hill
House in the Hill District.
“Stories in Art
has proven to be one of the museum’s most successful recent initiatives,”
says Richard Armstrong, the Henry J. Heinz II director of the Museum
of Art. “Reading
and looking at art are among life’s greatest pleasures, and we are very
pleased to help introduce such joy to children.”
The ultimate goal of Stories
in Art, of course, is to encourage children to become lifelong visitors
to the museums and library. Jenni
Stephens believes it’s working. “Our kids are very loyal,” she says.
[PHOTO; CAPTION]
Museum on the Move
Because of medical limitations, some children are not
able to experience the museums through field trips and school or library
programs. For children who have
special needs, Carnegie Museum of Natural History offers Museum on the Move.
Developed
in 1982 by Diane Grzybek, now interim chair of the Museum
of Natural History’s Division
of Education, Museum on the Move
has reached more than 200,000 children in the past 20 years.
In addition, the initiative expanded in 1997 to reach
older adults at assisted living facilities, personal care homes, and adult
day care in partnership with Carnegie
Science Center,
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and Frick Art and Historical
Center. All told, last year about 10,000 children
and adults participated in Museum on
the Move presentations at more than 130 sites in five counties.
Museum on the Move
is funded by numerous foundations, businesses, groups, and individuals and
is staffed by a team of 53 volunteers.
Some volunteers are trained as presenters in the program’s 13
natural history and anthropology topics, and others work behind the scenes,
sewing crafts for hands-on projects.
Presenters
use their training, hand-made crafts, and the Natural History museum’s own
collection of artifacts to engage children in what Museum on the Move program assistant Lenore Adler calls
“high-touch, low-tech” activities.
The activities are designed to appeal to the senses of children and
older adults whose physical, mental, or emotional disabilities prevent them
from enjoying conventional exhibits or lectures.
Activities range from digging out fossils from plaster
and sand mounds to playing an Inuit game called ajagak to handling an elephant’s toenail, a giraffe’s bone, or
a leopard’s skin.
On a
recent Wednesday morning at Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital, Museum on the Move volunteers fan
out through the short-term and long-term stay units.
Presenters
Jack Geltz and Shirley Hanlon help10-year-old Jenessa, whose conductive
hearing loss has led to yet another hospital stay, decorate a bunny hand
puppet. Jenessa shies away from
touching the real rabbit fur Jack offers her. “I wish she’d smile some,” says her
mother, Tracy. But, Tracy reasons,
at least Janessa is here in the playroom, engaged in a stimulating activity
and learning something new, instead of whiling away the endless hours
watching TV in her hospital room.
Downstairs,
in the Oncology Unit’s playroom, presenter Carol Lerberg guides the
children in creating tableaus that illustrate the life cycle of a Monarch
butterfly. They use grains of rice
for the eggs, clay for the chrysalis, and pom-poms for the
caterpillar. Six-year-old Dakota,
diagnosed with leukemia just three weeks ago, is taking part in his first Museum on the Move
presentation. Shy at first, he soon
joins in with the other children, long-term cancer patients who have seen
this presentation on butterflies before.
“They
don’t seem to mind. They really look
forward to it,” observes Carol. “We
always try to add something new for them.”
Today, they’re also painting the wings on butterfly sun-catchers.
Julianna
Underwood, a child life specialist at Children’s Hospital, marvels at the
dedication of Carol and the other volunteers. “They come every single Wednesday, in the
snow and rain. It’s amazing.”
Museum on the Move program assistant
Lenore Adler believes she can explain the volunteers’ dedication. “It’s good to see a child smile and be
taken away from everything else going on around him,” she says. “We may not see any reaction for the
first 20 minutes of our presentation.
Then, we can see him switch gears, and join in. It’s those small moments that count. It’s seeing a deaf child form the word
‘frog.’ It’s
hearing him make—for the first time—the sound ‘ribbit.’”
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