Texas Trends in Art Education, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 1985 Page: 38
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Museum Education
Points
of Intersection:
The Art Museum
and
UniversityArt Education Program
It is a sunny April Saturday in the Univer-
sity Atrium. A large abstract painting
hangs on one wall, and in front of it pairs of
elementary classroom teachers dramatize
the formal qualities of the work. One pair
uses body pose and gesture to indicate mass
and line direction, incorporating voice sounds
corresponding to colors and rhythm instru-
ment sounds for repetitive lines. In a nearby
area a second group of teachers is improvis-
ing "across the floor" dance movements
which express color qualities such as "vivid
red" and "icy blue." The two "colors" move
together, interacting. A third group is care-
fully examining paintings and prints in a
small study exhibition at one end of the
Atrium. Each person develops a "perception
exercise" related to looking at one work, and
practices the exercise with the group.
This is not a description of a current
program, but of a 1977 all-day teacher inser-
vice workshop which introduced elementary
classroom teachers to multi-sensory, inter-
related arts approaches to teaching the vi-
sual arts.
The workshop was held at the Univer-
sity of Houston-Clear Lake City (UH-CLC),
now the University of Houston-Clear Lake,
and was a cooperative project of the Univer-
sity's Art Education Program and the Educa-
tion Department of the Contemporary Arts
Museum of Houston which brought together
an urban museum and a suburban university.
This workshop was not an isolated event,
but the initial project in a five-year cooper-
ative effort in art education which the au-
thors coordinated between 1977 and 1981.
Titled the UH/CLC-CAM Workshop of theArts, the program consisted of three distinct
but interrelated areas: (1) workshops for
pre- and inservice classroom and art
teachers, (2) art workshops for children of
the community and (3) museum internships
for university graduate students in art
education.
What significance does this cooperative
venture have for the field of art education in
1985? In reflecting on our experiences in de-
signing and co-directing this program, we
find that specific aspects of it are important
issues in art education today: (1) a focus on
content areas in art, particularly the areas
of aesthetic perception and art criticism,
(2) the preparation of pre- and inservice
teachers for teaching these content areas,
(3) the educational role of art museums as
repositories of real works of art, and (4) the
formation of viable partnerships in art
education.
Further, we identified what we have
chosen to call "points of intersection" be-
tween and among certain assets possessed
by universities and art museums respec-
tively which made our particular program
workable, and which may be generalized to
other situations.
A short history of the UH/CLC-CAM
Workshop of the Arts may provide a back-
ground for discussion of these "points of in-
tersection" and their usefulness for art
educators in planning current and future pro-
grams. Our venture into cooperative pro-
gramming began with informal conversations
about our respective programs and educa-
tional objectives. Networking among col-
leagues may be considered to be the firststep in cooperative programs. We gradually
identified areas in which the needs, assets,
and goals of the museum and the university
intersected and overlapped. The initial pro-
ject, the Arts Awareness Workshop for
Teachers, described at the beginning of this
article, introduced teachers to a model for
aesthetic perception strategies in large part
developed in the field of museum education.
Arts Awareness, as presented in this Work-
shop, emphasized the elements common to
all forms of art, experiential responses to
art works, and interpretations of visual art
forms through dance movement, music, and
improvisational drama. The workshop was
conducted by dance, drama and art edu-
cation specialists, and was designed to
"strengthen the participants' own percep-
tions and responses to the arts" and intro-
duce them to "perceptual and motivational
techniques and related activities in the three
areas of art, dance and drama for the ele-
mentary classroom" (from the workshop
brochure). A major objective was personal
growth in the arts for people charged with
teaching art to children. The university com-
munity provided the academic environment
and attracted the teachers and university
students who were receptive to the teaching
strategies. The suburban location facilitated
participation by teachers who could not
travel to the museum, almost thirty miles
away, and as far as sixty or more miles from
their homes.
A pilot art workshop for children was
held at the University during the summer of
1977. It was conducted by an artist/teacherI
TRENDS / fall 1985
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Texas Art Education Association. Texas Trends in Art Education, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 1985, periodical, Autumn 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth279681/m1/40/?q=architectural+drawings: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Art Education Association.