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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

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Past Exhibition

KIDSART
June 7 - June 23, 2001

School Visit Program
Mini Museum Program
Empire State Partnership Program
Teacher Training Workshops

The Rotunda Gallery is a not-for-profit visual arts organization that provides exhibition opportunities and services for Brooklyn-affiliated artists. Since 1984, its Education Program, has been instrumental in introducing contemporary art to thousands of New York City school children through school visits, museum outreach programs, in-school and after school learning experiences.

School Visit Program
Schools groups visiting the Rotunda Gallery use the gallery as their classroom. Exhibitions are the inspiration for individualized lessons, which include informal discussions and hands-on art making projects incorporating the exhibiting artists' ideas, materials, and/or methods. The following exhibitions are represented in KIDSART:

Wunderkammer: Wonderworks was based on 17th-century cabinets of curiosity (precursor sto the modern museum) and included an eclectic array of contemporary artwork and collections of related objects. Students discussed various aspects of museum practice, and created handmade books in which they catalogued real or imaginary collections.

Design Brooklyn 2000 showcased the work of Brooklyn-based designers and featured furniture, lighting and other decorative accessories in all media. Students made drawings, collages and dioramas depicting dream rooms and imagined interiors.

Lost and Found: Reclaimed Moments explored the ways in which artists can recycle and transform materials to evoke both the endurance and impermanence of things. Borrowing from the artist Eung Ho Park’s installation I am Watching You, students fabricated fantastical bottle-cap eyes which they installed in their classrooms.

Cities & Desire investigated artists’ visions of the city. The exhibition was curated by searching the Gallery’s Slide Registry using keywords from an evocative passage in Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. Students made drawings of their favorite artworks, indicating which word from the passage they thought applied to the piece. They then worked in groups to create their own structures out of multi-colored pipe cleaners and buttons in the style of exhibiting artist Emily Stern.

Mini Museum Program

The Rotunda Gallery's school outreach program, Mini-Museum, integrates art instruction with school curriculum through a series of gallery visits and classroom lessons, and culminates in the creation of a mini-museum or installation project in the participating school. Student learn about contemporary art, meet working artists, create artwork in a variety of media, and learn about museum practice.

P.S. 198, East Flatbush: Students from several grades worked with artist/educator Alex Exposito to create an installation of shaped paintings throughout the main lobby, hallway and school office. 4th grade students designed the motif and drew preliminary sketches on masonite boards which the custodian cut in shapes to be painted by the entire school. The work celebrates the joys of reading.
I.S. 220, Sunset Park: 6th grade students worked with artist/educator Hawley Hussey and their science teacher to create a large-scale permanent installation depicting the flora and fauna of the rain forest. Each student adopted a role of ecologist, ethnobotanist, or chemist, and then researched an aspect of the rainforest eco-system from that perspective. They created mixed media 12 by 12 "tiles" that were mounted over the entryway to the Science Room.
P.S. 174, East New York: Working with artist/educators Andrew Christman and Alex Exposito, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students engaged in a wide range of artmaking projects, including drawing, painting and sculpture. Reinforcing the importance of reading and literacy, many lessons focused on artists’ books. Third graders created a colorful mural in the school auditorium celebrating cultural diversity.
P.S. 222 Marine Park: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade students worked on a variety of projects with artist/educator Hawley Hussey. They collaborated with their music teacher to create two theatrical sets, one representing a "Broadway Medley" of favorite musicals and the other for the Mikado. They also studied African ritual adornment and created their own masks out of painted assemblaged wood.
I.S. 291 Bushwick: Artist/educator Barbara Neulinger worked with 7th and 8th graders to paint a mural in the school auditorium depicting personal cultural histories. With artist/educator Hawley Hussey they transformed a classroom into an art temple, painting all the walls and adding decorative trim. The installation featured small collected objects displayed in cases and shelves.
I.S. 296 Bushwick: MIS3 students participated in a general survey art course with artist/educator Andrew Christman. Projects included, drawing, painting, two-dimensional and three-dimensional collage and other mixed-media projects.
I.S. 383 Bushwick: 6th graders and artist/educator Hawley Hussey created theatrical sets for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown that included a multi-cultural rendition of the classic Peanuts characters and Once Upon an Island celebrating Caribbean cultural heritage and the immigrant experience in Brooklyn.
I.S. 99 Midwood: With artist/educator Hawley Hussey, students from the 6th, 7th and 8th grade created a 3-dimensional installation illustrating favorite Hans Christian Anderson stories. The installation included sculpture made from painted and collaged foam core. With artist/educator Rosemarie Fiore and their science teacher, students created dioramas of plants and animals in their natural habitats. The dioramas are equipped with children’s microscope lenses which allow viewers to zoom into the interior of the scenes.
P.S. 153 Homecrest: Celebrating the joys of reading, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders in the after school program worked with artist/educator Alex Exposito to create an installation and mural depicting scenes from the delightful Madeline books. The installation included foam core panels of the Eiffel Tower and Madeline’s Parisian home.
P.S. 194 Sheepshead Bay: With artist/educator Barbara Neulinger, kindergarteners and 1st graders worked on a variety of artmaking techniques such as drawing, painting, sculpture and collage. 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade students worked with artist/educator Alex Exposito to paint a jubilant mural depicting musical traditions from around the world.
P.S. 206 Gravesend: Working with artist/educator Rosemarie Fiore, 4th graders practiced several artistic techniques culminating in paintings of their neighborhood. Beginning with the study of gray scales and moving on to pencil tonal drawings and color mixing, students applied their rendering and observation skills to the scenes they see every day.
P.S. 277 Gerritsen Beach: 3rd grades students worked with artist/educator Hawley Hussey to create cityscape montages and nighttime skylines inspired by Faith Ringold’s paintings of neighborhood scenes and urban landscapes.

Empire State Partnership Program

With support from the New York State Council on the Arts Empire State Partnership Program, the Rotunda Gallery has developed a museum/school collaboration, which serves the entire school population with a comprehensive arts program focused on the visual arts and museum studies, and brings contemporary visiting artists and museum professionals to the school.

I.S. 49, Williamsburg/Bushwick: Students work with artist/educators Millie Burns, Andrew Christman and Alex Exposito, school art teacher Mike Kaye, and Rotunda Director of Education Meridith McNeal to create a series of full-scale student exhibitions each year. Exhibitions are presented in the school’s Mini-Museum which students, teachers and artist/educators constructed in 1999. The concept of this season’s opening exhibition, COLLECTION OBSESSION was inspired by the Rotunda Gallery exhibition, Wunderkammer: Wonderworks. For their second exhibition Jump! Twist! Twirl: a visual exploration of dance, students enrolled in Dance and Cultural Awareness classes created life-size wire sculptures; the third exhibition What Lies Beneath: Systems of the Body features painting, collage and fabric sculptures by Science students. These exhibitions were all curated and installed by students; at the exhibition opening students serve as docents, providing gallery tours and demonstrations of the artmaking processes they had learned. Other art projects this year included lessons on abstract painting taught in Spanish to Bilingual Social Studies students by visiting artist Yvonne Estrada and bookmaking and collage techniques with artist/educator Andrew Christman. On view in KIDSART is a reconstruction of the I.S. 49 Jump! Twist! Twirl! exhibition. The wire sculptures represent the final product of a process that included reviewing basic choreographic principles, developing poses, and creating preliminary drawings.

Teacher Training Workshops

The Rotunda Gallery provides professional development workshops to schools and school districts, providing an opportunity for teachers to study contemporary art and artmaking techniques, and to explore ways of integrating art into the curriculum. Teachers from Brooklyn School Districts 14, 19, 21, 22, and 32 participated in a range of workshops tailored to their needs, including individual one-day sessions and a year-long collaboration in District 22.

During hands-on-workshops teachers experiment with several artmaking techniques and explore ways to use a variety of readily available materials. Studio tours offer participants a unique opportunity to learn about artists’ creative processes. On gallery tours teachers identify local arts organizations that they can share with their classes.

The Gallery is grateful to the Sally and Milton Avery Foundation, Con Edison, the Education Foundation of America, the Greenwall Foundation, HSBC Bank USA, Independence Community Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President and the Brooklyn Delegation to the New York City Council, New York Community Trust, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation, the Friends of the Rotunda Gallery and Richard Fisher for their support of the Education and Exhibition Programs.

Drawings by Lisa Peet