Huzzah! Extraordinary Transportation!

Alexander Calder, Streetcar

This morning, at 10:30 AM, the curse was broken. Adrienne and I finally gave a student tour after three no-show groups! And it was a success! The group was pretty rambunctious, but they really got into all the artworks we were exploring. We started out with Calder’s Streetcar. This was a great piece to begin with because it engaged the students so quickly! It was hanging from the ceiling, so Adrienne had the students walk around in a circle. Because they were generating an air current, the mobile started to move! I’ve noticed that by getting the students up and moving with the artwork, students feel more involved and are more willing to answer questions.


Egyptian Model Boat

Next we moved to the Egyptian model boat and mummy case. I swear, anytime you involve dead bodies or gruesome pictures, 5th grade boys perk right up. After explaining the Egyptian afterlife to the group, one boy raised his hand and said, “I don’t mean to sound offensive, but that just sounds silly.” It was one of those questions I was dreading answering, but I think I handled it well. I knew at one point during this internship someone would ask “Why is this piece considered art?”or “why would someone believe that?”, and I’ll admit that I was not looking forward to answering them. But once I explained that different cultures view the world differently, the boy seemed to nod and accept my answer. Phew. Later on during the studio portion of the tour, that boy told the whole group that the Egyptian pieces were his favorite! Success.



The other pieces Adrienne and I used were the Kumara riding on a peacock sculpture, a Venice painting by Marieschi, a hippogriff sculpture (eliciting plenty of Harry Potter comments), and Monet’s London Train Series. Overall the tour went very well! The students seemed to enjoy it and Adrienne and I didn’t make any catastrophic mistakes.

Tomorrow is our first ABCs tour and I’m really excited!! We’ll be discussing animals in all different types of art. Hopefully it’s just as EXTRAORDINARY as today’s tour!

Family Gallery Walks, Open Questions, and the Magic of Name Tags

On Sunday I was able to give my first Family Programs Gallery Walk and despite it not being what I expected, I would consider it a learning experience if not a success.

The theme I chose, Families in Art, was comprised of the set of John Singleton Copley portraits, Doris Lee’s Thanksgiving, and Hockney’s American Collectors. I spent days prepping for it, learning each of the artist bios, each of the pieces respective histories, and generally preparing for the unexpected from what I hoped would be inquisitive kids.

John Singleton Copley, Daniel Hubbard 1764

John Singleton Copley, Mrs. Daniel Hubbard (Mary Greene) 1764

Doris Lee, Thanksgiving 1935

David Hockney, American Collectors 1968

I quickly learned however that the families on my tour were accustomed to taking part in tours where they were they would simply listen and not be bombarded with questions. As a result the first few minutes were what I feared: dead silence as adults and children simply looked at me expecting me to answer my own questions.
Alas, I remembered an important tool I had at my disposal: the almighty nametag. Referring to someone by their name helps foster a sense of intimacy in which people are less likely to be afraid to participate.
I started off by calling on the parents, who were more than willing to participate. Once the children saw their adult actively engaging with both the art and myself they slowly began participating as well. As the tour progressed they quickly gained a level of comfort with answering questions after learning that there were no wrong answers.
By the time it was over I was actually sad that it had only been half an hour as the families were more than willing to continue looking at art. The majority of the children had never been in the Modern Wing and were excited to go off and explore on their own. The moral of the story: make use of the nametags!!!

I broke the Jinx!

I successfully gave my first Adult Tour this Thursday!

Though, I am excited that I managed to engage and educate a group of adult museum goers - a feat that seems particularly more nerve-racking than entertaining school groups and summer camps - I am most excited that I may not be the bad luck charm responsible for repulsing our would-be tour participants of the Art Institute.

(The jury is still out on Mary's bad luck and whether she is the cause of our misfortunes this week - Sorry Mary.)

FYI: In case you have not read my last blog post "The Case of the Jinxed Intern Pair," Mary and I endured the frustration and humiliation of three no-show tour groups throughout the week. Nobody likes being stood up. Our emotional wounds are still healing.

I am happy to report though, that I have broken the jinx.

After anxiously waiting in Griffin Court (with the much appreciated presence of a few other interns) a group of about 10-15 talkative museum patrons showed up for the Highlights of the Modern Wing tour I was giving with Senior Lecturer, Margaret Farr. Unfortunately the lines to get into the museum during our Thursday night free hours are so long that I know at least one friend could not even get into the museum in time to participate in my tour. *Note for future Tour-goers – Come early for the 5:30 free hours tours*

Margaret started our “Contemporary Storytelling” themed tour with Gerhard Richter’s, “Woman Descending a Staircase.” This piece is one of my personal favorites. The audience was very engaged and Margaret perfectly segued into my next two pieces by introducing ideas of layered understanding and closer investigation.

Next I took the group to Charles Ray’s, “Hinoki” asking them to give me their first impressions from further back and inviting them to take a closer look to see what it might reveal. I’ve found that this piece is rewarding to talk about. Everyone seems to be intrigued by it and they always want to know more. You can’t lose with a piece that takes a lot of technical skill (even if not by the artist, himself) and has a lot of good anecdotes to accompany it.

The third and final piece (the 5:30 tours are only 30 minutes) was Doris Salcedo’s, “Untitled (Armoire).” I was a little bit worried about people connecting to this piece and I did have one man express his frustration, but I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction and interest from the rest of the crowd.

This tour was really fun and it is up there with Family Tours as my favorite kind of tour to give. People pose interesting questions, make insightful points and usually manage to get you to look at the piece in a new light. ...wait, isn’t that my job?

Now, a few words of advice to future interns about the kind of …well, ‘characters’ you may get on a tour:

1) Always acknowledge someone’s comment, question or concern…even if they ask/state the same thing repeatedly. You will hear yourself say “Yeah, sure, maybe, that could be” more than you would like to know, but it will get worse if you chose to ignore them.

2) Other tour participants may not appreciate the incessant questioning or commenting of another tour participant – Don’t be afraid to ask, “Does anyone else have a question or comment?” while looking through/past/around said tour participant.

You’ll have your crazy, angry, frustrated, bored and know-it-all tour participants, but the large majority are nice, encouraging and engaged. They chose to be there, we want to talk to them and that’s what makes it fun.

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)

The Case of the Jinxed Intern Pair

Sad interns - Mary D. and Adrienne (me)

This week was supposed to be our second week of touring real student groups after our intense and nerve racking mock-tour presentations. Most of the interns were able to try out a new tour theme, introduce different works to eager young eyes and most importantly, get the experience under their belts that would prepare them for giving solo tours. Most interns have had this luxury. Unfortunately, Mary and I have not.

For the third time this week, our tour was canceled.

We spent last week and the weekend preparing our new, exciting tour themed: "EXTRAORDINARY TRANSPORTATION!"(to be said in a British accent). We were anxious to try it out and talk about new pieces but the week had other plans in store for us:

Tuesday - The scheduled school group tried to call during the 4th of July holiday weekend - needless to say we didn't get the message until Tuesday morning. 'That's fine,' we thought, 'We'll just have more time to make this tour even more EXTRAORDINARY.'

Wednesday - After waiting in the studio for 20 minutes, the school group called Gianna to let her know they would not be able to make it. Gianna, Mary and I were not happy. Mary and I began to take it personal and ideas of capes, puffs of smoke and British accents started to trickle into our tour plans - 'They'll be sorry for missing THIS tour!'

Thursday - All of the interns were stood up as we waited on a group of 80 students who did not show up until 11:30. The tours are supposed to end at 11:30. Our bad luck jinxed the entire group - my sincere apologies to everyone else. Our EXTRAORDINARY tour has still not embarked on it's maiden voyage - fears that it may be too ordinary have started to creep in.

Barye "Roger and Angelica Mounted on a Hippogriff"
Part of the EXTRAORDINARY TRANSPORTATION Tour

Things learned:
1) Don't disrespect the interns/docents by not showing up for a tour - or you'll have Gianna to deal with. Gianna is awesome and will give a stern talking to/reprimand/not reschedule a group that does not show up without advance notice.

2) Summer groups are unpredictable - the number, age and presence of students could change at any time. Roll with it - the best part of touring is the unpredictability.

3) No group, means more tour prep time - this could be a good thing...or it could drive you crazy.

Now on our third day of unexpected free time - Mary and I are left to do even more research on the tour that never was and I will prepare for my adult tour tonight at 5:30 - assuming that my bad luck has not reached the adult audiences of the Art Institute. If so, I may be giving a private Highlights of the Modern Wing tour to a few lucky interns who don't mind staying a little after work.