From overbearing chaperones to touring solo!

Jen and I had quite the interesting tour this afternoon. Our group consisted of 4th through 8th graders, but a majority of the students were in the 6th to 7th grade range. They were a particularly smart group, but for the first half of the tour, while Jen and I were asking what we thought were interesting and engaging questions, we were met with crickets! They looked interested in what we were saying, but the students seemed intimidated to say anything at all. This was particularly evident when we got to Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Not only is this painting one of our most famous pieces, but the teacher/lead chaperone of the group also told us before the tour that the kids were very excited to see the pointilist piece that they had discussed in class.

Jen & I used the same "Technology & Innovation" tour that we blogged about before, and we noticed that the lead chaperone began to hijack our tour towards the end of our discussion of Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Day. We're on a fairly tight 1 hour schedule for student tours, and we normally plan to talk about 6 pieces for about 10 minutes each. When we got to the end of the Caillebotte, and Jen was about to tell the kids to pick up their stools to move on to the Monet painting, the chaperone stepped in with, "I just want to say a few more things about this piece before we move on." My first thought was, "Sure! Why not. Maybe they're learning about something in particular in class." About three minutes later, after a *riveting* discussion of repetitive shapes, we moved on.


When we got to the Seurat piece, all of the kids got excited and took their seats. They sat patiently and listened to Jen talk about Pointilism and innovations in optics during the late 19th century. The students all seemed a bit too intimidated to say much about the piece, even though they had already discussed it in class. I began to notice that the chaperone was looking impatiently at the kids, and leading some of their answers to Jen's questions. Finally, Jen got the kids to open up by talking about the different animals in the painting, namely the monkey on a leash in the front right corner, which a few of the kids had made curious comments about. Toward the end of the discussion, yet again, the chaperone said that she wanted to say a little something. She stood up and asked the kids, "Where does your eye go first when you look at this painting?" One little boy said enthusiastically, "the monkey!" and a few other students nodded. The chaperone then said, "No! Look at the little girl in the white dress. That's where your eye should go first."

Watching this lady tell her students that they were experiencing Seurat's iconic painting incorrectly really upset me. The last thing that we want to do on our tours is tell kids that there is a right and a wrong way to talk about and experience art. Everyone should be allowed to look at things differently, and our discussion of each piece allows the students to listen to each other's different points of view. A little girl next to me turned and whispered in a downtrodden tone, "My eye went to the monkey..." I reassured her (fairly loudly) that everyone sees different things, and that it was perfectly fine that she saw the monkey first. I tried not to belittle the chaperone's comment, so I asked the little girl what she thought about the girl in the painting, and got her to talk a bit about that. The chaperone then proceeded to tell the kids "facts" about the painting that were just plain wrong (ie: "The little girl in the white dress is the only figure painted not in a pointilist style." ...excuse me?). Jen and I looked at each other and mutually understood that we had had enough.

We quickly moved on to the Modern Wing, and discussed the Bonticou and Richter pieces. Since the chaperone didn't seem to know much about either of these objects, she sat back and let the kids talk more. These two pieces, by *far*, were our two most successful pieces of the day. We got the kids to talk about the different materials in the Bonticou, and how its context within the Vietnam and Cold Wars added to its symbolic meaning. We talked about photography and painting in Richter's Woman Descending the Staircase, and got the kids excited about glamorous celebrities and digital photography's role in pop culture today. It's amazing how far these kids pushed these pieces' meanings on their own, without needing much help from the chaperones (or us!).

In these past five weeks, I've learned some valuable lessons. Here are a few of the things that I would like to pass on to future interns about school group tours:

• When you prepare a tour for a group of thirty 5th-8th graders, don't be shocked when a group of forty 3rd-6th graders show up. Flexibility and improvisation are invaluable skills in this job, but they also make it much more fun.
• Be prepared to lengthen or shorten your tour at will. Not only do groups rarely show up on time (sometimes half an hour early, sometimes half an hour late), but you also may end up spending 15 minutes having kids pose as characters from the Seurat painting, and end up with minimal time to spend talking about O'Keefe.
• Note the attention span of the group and go with it. Sometimes kids will think that every word coming out of your mouth is pure gold, and other times, you may as well be speaking Latin. If they look engaged, stick with it. If they look bored, either spice it up or move on.
• When invited to happy hour with the staff....go!
• Make your intern team a collaborative one. I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a group of 7 people to bounce ideas off of!
• Don't let the first two weeks of training scare the crap (and fun) out of you. Touring with real kids (as opposed to your peers and supervisors pretending to be kids) is much less nerve-racking and intense.
  
• Use your lesson plan as a loose guide. Don't be upset if you've created a series of elaborate open ended questions meant to uncover the great ideological mystery behind Hinoki's tree...and you just don't get to it. Adjusting to the types of things that seem to interest the group and making sure that they take something valuable away from it is much more important.

Now that we all have our 2 weeks of training and 3 weeks of partnered touring under our belts, I think that I can speak for all of the interns when I say that we are all equally nervous and excited to start touring solo. It's been pretty nice having a right-hand-(wo)man who can keep track of time, help corral the little ones and, of course, make sure to jot down the ever-entertaining comments from the kids.

Here are some photos of the interns from the past few weeks:

David, Maya, Meghan, Adrienne & I at the Taste of Chicago

Natalie, Sandy & David at lunch in the Lurie Garden

Jen & Maya enjoying lunch in the Lurie Garden

The "lazy river"/"best place to eat lunch ever" in the Lurie Garden.

Maya getting comfy and researching in the docent room

Jen & I hamming it up for the camera

Sandy, Me & Natalie at a Caribou concert @ Pritzker Pavillion

Major (Okay, Minor) Fail

After three false starts, Mary H. and I (Jen) still have not completed our Art from Many Places: Ritual and Celebration tour as initially intended! The game plan for this tour has been to start at the Mummy Case; then on to the Persephone Plate, which is officially - and creatively - titled Knob Handled Dish (one of our personal favorite titles, by the way - right up there with Millet’s Peasants Bringing Home a Calf Born in the Fields. Really, Millet? Really?!).

Coffin and Mummy of Paankhenamun, c. 945–715 B.C.


Knob Handled Dish, 1864


Jean-Francois Millet, Peasants Bringing Home a Calf Born in the Fields, 1864

American Gothic comes next, followed by the lovely dancing Shiva. We then fast-forward a few (thousand) years to Robert Watts’s Auto Series from 1971 - 3, ending at On Kawara’s Oct. 31, 1978.

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930


Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), Chola period, c. 10th/11th century




*imagine Robert Watts's Auto Series here*

On Kawara, Oct. 31, 1978, 1978

Last week was our first attempt at this tour, and it began without a hitch. Soon, however, we began to notice a trend: dragons. The kids were wanting dragons. A lot. They had been studying Asian art, and dragons in particular, and had been hoping to see one or two on their trip to the Art Institute. Well, far be it from us to stand in their way. Luckily, I had an ancient Chinese dragon plate lesson handy from our Animals in Art tours, so we quickly revised our plan. But as a result, both of our contemporary pieces - Auto Series and the On Kawara date piece - got the shaft.


Later that week, we eagerly awaited the arrival of our Ritual and Celebration tour-goers... We waited... and waited... Unfortunately for all of us, the group didn’t show up until 11:30! The time that the tour is supposed to end! Well, they were forced to tour themselves around the museum (sorry, guys!) and we were forced to wait another week to give our much-anticipated R&C tour.

Today we got our third (and probably final!) chance to give our elusive tour. Everything was going great until we marched up the American wing stairs to find Terrah - AIC's Kress Fellow - surrounded by an eager group of her own at American Gothic. It was ours no longer! Major fail!

The good news is that we finally made it to both of our contemporary pieces. We started with the Watts Auto Series photographs, which were initially met with some sideways glances. As the kids began to talk about what they saw, however, it was clear that they could grasp the ritual content of the piece. The celebratory aspect, however, was a bit trickier.

Heading up to the On Kawara date painting, I was pretty worried that we would have a rebellion on our hands. And not to disappoint, the first question I got was, “How is this art?” Good question, kid. Let’s talk about that... We discussed the artist’s process of daily creation, and the group, again, was able to see the ritual aspect rather quickly. More than with the Watt’s piece, I wanted to impress upon them the celebratory aspect of this work, so I pushed a bit harder with my questions. All of a sudden, their faces lit up with recognition and they seemed to see it: the work is a celebration of living, of the simple act of being alive one more day.

Well, with a success like that, I think we can both live with a little bit of tour-giving failure. I, for one, would take that compromise any day!

Rising to the Challenge

Yesterday, Jen and I (Mary H.) gave a very different (but very fulfilling) kind of tour. We worked with a group of college-aged kids with special needs, who functioned at a 6th-8th grade level. When we heard about our audience for this tour, we also heard that they had been studying a bit of Art History, and that they wanted "an industrial and contemporary" tour...what this means exactly, we still aren't completely sure. We used these guidelines to the best of our abilities and created a "Technology & Innovation" tour, which included 16th century Milanese armor, Monet's Arrival of Normandy Train--Gare Saint-Lazare, Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day, Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Bonticou's Untitled wall relief, and Richter's Woman Descending the Staircase.







While Jen has a background in special education, she has only worked with younger students, and was fairly nervous about working with this population. I had never worked with special needs students before, so needless to say, it was an adventure for us both.

We had initially planned a "brilliant" activity that involved splitting the students into two groups, and having each group present one painting to the rest of their classmates. Upon explaining this activity to one of the group's chaperones, our idea was quickly and politely rejected. The chaperone thought it would be best to stick with a more linear tour, and to cater to the short attention span of the group.

Our flexibility and improv skills proved invaluable during this tour. After a slightly-too-long discussion of the armor, we adjusted our timing and realized that the most important thing was picking up the pace and keeping the students engaged. We were pleasantly surprised by the group's insightful comments about the Caillebotte and Seurat pieces. One woman raised her hand and said, "Look at the people...they're walking together, but no one is talking to each other." I saw Jen's face light up, knowing full well that the woman's comment was the perfect segue to Jen's discussion of Caillebotte's lonely Parisian boulevard.

The tour ended with a lively discussion of the group's favorite celebrities in front of Richter's painting, which ranged from Faith Hill and Jennifer Lopez to Miley Cyrus. I must admit that when I asked for words that they associate with Jennifer Lopez, I was silently praying that the word "booty" did not come up. Luckily for us, the group found JLo's singing voice much more memorable than her derriere.

Overall, we found this tour to be a great success and a fantastic learning opportunity. Essentially, "We are rockstars." -Jen

(Written by Mary H. & Jen)

Three whirlwind weeks at the AIC!

After two weeks of intense training, and being shuttled between school, family and adult programs, we all have survived information overload and mock tours! Go us!

Even though we had heard that those two weeks would be tough from the past interns’ blog (thank you, thank you, thank you, by the way!), as well as from our supervisors, I’m pretty sure that we all just had to experience it for ourselves. Mock tours actually weren’t as terrifying as I thought that they would be! Don’t get me wrong…they were stressful and very time-consuming. But after actually standing up in front of the rest of this fabulous team of interns and our lovely supervisors, I felt much more comfortable with the idea of talking about art with various groups of people. Having just graduated, I have to get it out of my head that everything that I do here at the AIC is for a grade! The atmosphere among the interns and in the docent room is really nice. Everyone is here to help and encourage each other, and competition isn’t even involved! My kind of team! My biggest challenge in the next few weeks, I think, will be gauging how much kids already know at different ages, and adjusting my lesson plans to fit those different age groups. I have a feeling that there will be a lot of improvisation happening in my first few tours.

(Mary D., David, Sandy, Maya, Adrienne, and me (Mary H.) outside the Modern Wing)

It’s the start of week 3, and Jen and I had our first real tour yesterday morning! Although, overall, we both were very satisfied with how it went, it did not come without challenges. First of all, we usually deal with groups of students that are around the same age (within a year or two, ideally). This group consisted of kids ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade, even with a high schooler in attendance. It was very difficult to try to speak to everyone without feeling like we were belittling the older kids and boring the younger kids. We did the best we could, and everyone seemed pretty happy by the end of the tour. We did have some pretty funny comments from the little ones (I think we’re going to make a twitter account in connection with this page along the lines of “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”)

1) “I wish I could just marry this museum!”
2) “You know what most artists make? …Boobies.”

Ahh, the question of nudity in art when dealing with kids. Again, I had been warned that it would happen, and that these questions would arise. But until you hear a 6-year-old giggling about it and realize that you have to be the adult to answer questions about it, you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into. I replied to this particular giggly 6-year-old with a tidbit about how artists see the human body as a part of nature, and that they need to see the human body to understand how muscles and bones work together, etc etc.

This morning, Jen and I had a very compliant group of first graders who were early (*gasp) for their tour! We kept our tour theme from yesterday, “Movement,” but swapped out a few objects this time around after figuring out that Monet’s Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare is in a very crowded gallery, and would be a difficult (and small) piece to monopolize with a bunch of 1^st graders. From story-telling with Ganesha, to talking about Degas’s ballerinas and posing like the people in Sunday on La Grande Jatte, I’d say we feel pretty comfortable with our tour tactics! The kids seemed pretty excited, too.

Aside from giving tours, we also have a lot of other cool activities going on. Yesterday, we helped out with the AIC studio art table at the Taste of Chicago by helping kids and their families make themed hats and watercolor projects! Here are Mary D. and Maya modeling their own foodie hat creations while "intently researching:"

This afternoon, we also got a walk-through of the Prints and Drawings exhibit (and inside the vault!) with curator Mark Pascale. We all definitely geeked out when we saw a Degas pastel drawing and a few fabulous Toulouse Lautrec poster prints (a draft without text next to the final version…so cool!) that most people don’t get to see. Needless to say, I think we're all pretty excited about the next 5 weeks! Onward, mush!

--Mary H.

Mary C.K. Hayes

Hi everyone, and welcome to our 2010 Museum Ed Intern blog!

My name is Mary Hayes and I am originally from Denver, Colorado. I just graduated this past June (2010) from Santa Clara University where I double majored in Art History and Communication. During my senior year, a few friends and I decided to pick up and move to a fun new city to explore job opportunities and to take some time off before applying to grad school. So, here I am in Chicago!

I have had prior experience with internships in art galleries and non profits both in Denver and in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I could not be more excited to spend 8 weeks with the Art Institute of Chicago in Museum Ed and share my passion for art and education!

If you want to know more about me, you can check out my LinkedIn account or my personal blog and twitter.
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