Museum Partnership

In the spring, a branch of our school district responsible for partnering museums with classrooms to provide students with rich learning opportunities selected our school to work with a local art museum. And administration chose me as lead teacher of the project. The museum's School Programs Coordinator and I worked together to create and implement the curriculum in fifth grade art class.

Our goals were:

• Engage students with contemporary art through the museum's temporary exhibition State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now

• Initiate discussion on materials and messages of contemporary art

• Create a collaborative work of art to represent our school at the museum

• Work in small groups to create a work of art addressing an issue at our school

• Present the artwork through class critique and public exhibition

The School Programs Coordinator met with my students during our regular class time to brainstorm materials and meanings with prints from the exhibition.

All fifth grade students went to the museum to see the works in person and create a part of the collaborative sculpture. For this artwork, each student created two "feathers" to represent our school mascot, the eagle. The feathers were joined together into a sculpture which can be displayed indoors or in the school's learning garden.

In the classroom, we held brainstorming sessions and created works of art using a variety of materials to address issues at our school. Students had to present their projects to the class and competed with one another for points on craftsmanship, creativity, and clarity of topic.

At the end of the partnership, we had a small reception at the museum. We later exhibited the collaborative piece at our school's art show.