Today, Monday November 16th, we practiced for our O’Keeffe tour which we will give this Saturday to the teens from the Bronx Museum. We started by breaking up into pairs to generate questions and go over the research we did last week. Once we had outlined some of the questions and topics we would bring up in our discussions we reconvened to talk a bit about the transitions from one painting to another. We realized that an introduction, conclusion, and transitions between paintings are key in making the tour flow.
We practiced our tours on each other, trying to simulate the types of responses and discussions we will encounter on Saturday. We focused on keeping our audience engaged, asking open ended questions, and relating our discussions back to our theme (perspective). We realized that we need to lay out the time frame for our tour so that we have enough time to get to each painting without boring our audience. This Saturday we are coming to the Whitney prepared with ideas about the introduction and conclusion so that we can give a focused, cohesive tour to our peers from the Bronx Museum.
2 weeks ago
This week we did more tour training for the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition.
We first learned about the 5 C’s of leading a tour: Confidence, Clarity, Conduct, Content and Connect. Giving a tour is much more than simply giving the viewer information about a piece of art, it is about connecting with them and engaging them in an discussion about art.
We then learned about different types of questions that we can ask the people whom are on the tour: brainstorming questions, observation questions, justification questions, compare and contrast questions, clarification questions, imagination questions, cross talk questions, information questions and evaluation questions. Each question serves a different purpose. Brainstorming questions and imagination questions get the viewer to relate the art to their own lives, whereas observation questions and clarification questions get the viewer to look closely at the artwork and then question what they see and why they see it.
After learning the basics of tour-giving, we did research on our specific painting and began to outline how we were going to present and what types of questions we would ask.
-Eve Peyser-Sappol
3 weeks ago
On Monday October 26th the Whitney CAB (Community Advisory Board) members got an insider tour from assistant curator of the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition, Sasha Nicholas. O’Keeffe’s work is very vibrant and full of color. Going through the exhibition is like walking through her entire life as an artist from beginning to end. It documents her art in chronological order from her charcoals and water colors in the very beginning of her career to pieces like My Last Door, towards the end.
This exhibition took 4 years to curate and there are a total of 120 pieces in the show. This show was especially difficult to curate because private owners and some prestigious museums own some of the pieces and it was hard to persuade them to lend it to the show. O’Keeffe’s use of color and the repetitive way in which she works create a language for her viewers. It’s as if she is telling a story; and that is exactly what this show illustrates: the story of her life. The O’Keeffe show is absolutely remarkable and I recommend you visit. Come and step into the abstract world of Georgia O’Keeffe!
It was a very exciting day for us CAB members. We are all so stoked to begin giving tours of this amazing exhibit!
1 month ago
Our first event of the fall semester with hybrid artist Britta Riley, who combines environmental issues with art, was super green! Some of you might have met Ms. Riley on Family Day, an annual event here at the Whitney Museum, early this October where she showcased her work alongside the flower and nature themed work of Georgia O’Keeffe. Each kid that participated in the Family Day events got to take home a simplified version of Britta’s window farms, complete with instructions, nutrients, pump, clay pellets, and of course, the baby plant itself.
For “Spring Rolls and Sustainability,” Britta brought all her tools to the Whitney and showed us step by step how to make our own window farms. (You can find all instructions on her website www.windowfarms.org.) She also talked about how the project is always growing and changing because of people who participate and share the different ways that they make their window farms work. Ultimately, what Britta wants is to have all of us take part in the project. It’s true, we should help our environment by doing whatever we can!
LASTLY, THERE’S THE SPRING ROLLS! AND DUMPLINGS!! What can i say? It was scrumptious!
So go check out Britta’s website and start your own WINDOW FARM today!
-Luyu Zhang
1 month ago
