RAM Talks Art: Learning about art is easy when online

By Elizabeth Dailing, Education Director, Rockford Art Museum

If an art museum visit scares you...go online first. There are so many resources online these days, it's hard not to consider learning something while online. When considering a visit to an art museum, many people still feel a certain level of intimidation walking in the doors and understanding what they see in front of them. Take some time online before your next museum visit, and you may find you know more than you think.

There are many large art museums that have amazing online resources. Take the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles at www.getty.edu. If you select Planning a School Visit, you are presented with pre-visit activities, visit activities and post-visit activities. You could do any of these K-12 activities for yourself or with your children prior to a family visit to learn more about what you will see.

When you select the Explore Art section, you can browse the collection by artist, type of art or subject. So, say you really like relief Renoir paintings. Choose type of art: painting, then scan until you find the painting Albert Cahen d'Anvers by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Who knew that Renoir referred to Impressionism as a "blind alley"?

On their Exhibitions page, very informative overviews of the current exhibitions are given. And, for the kids, they have games involving everything from the Detail Detective (which helps children learn to look for the subtle details in art) to jigsaw puzzles and activities you can download.

As you can see, a little searching can result in a ton of art information. If you want to make the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Web site your homepage (www.metmuseum.org), you would learn about a new featured work of their permanent collection every day! With a small image of the piece and a short description, you've learned something new about a piece of art that you may have never seen otherwise. This page also presents a link to the Featured Work of Arts area in the permanent collection to continue seeing and learning more.

Upon entering the rest of the site, you will see a section titled Explore and Learn. This area has information about games, learning about Met objects, artist biographies, themes and cultures, and publications. You can also explore the timeline of art history to see what art eras appeal to you. And if you don't have time to sit in front of the computer to learn, take the learning with you. You can download one of the Met's podcasts and take the information on the road.

And it's not only the big museums. You can learn about art from RAM as well. When you go to www.rockfordartmuseum.org, take a look at the Exhibitions page. Each exhibition has a description along with gallery location, dates and multiple images to view from the exhibition. You can even see past exhibitions and access their images as well.

And, say you wanted to see what opportunities there are for you to learn more about art. Visit the Education portion of the site and see what classes, lectures and presentations are available. You might find out that in four weeks you are willing to see if you are a painter at heart or not.

Just recently, we added a Teacher Resources section to the site, where we now have educator guides for exhibitions at RAM. These guides are an invaluable resource to learning about the exhibition, as well as some of the artists and activities you can do associated with that particular exhibition. So, even if you're not a teacher and are looking for something to do with the kids on Saturday, download the guide and do some activities with the kids to keep them engaged pre- or post-visit.

And, if you still aren't sure why art should be important for you, it's time to take a look at the National Art Education Association site. On the NAEA site (www.naea-reston.org), you can get as academic as you want. But I would suggest taking a look at "10 Lessons the Arts Teach." See if you can refute the fact that "the arts celebrate multiple perspectives." And "the arts teach students that small differences can have large effects." I know I can't. And, if you want to know why we should want to have art in our schools and should invest in the cultural capital our children hold in their hands, take a look at the Why Art Education? section as well.

So, take the time to learn something about art today. It can change your outlook, right from your own home.

Rockford Art Museum Education Director Elizabeth Dailing can be reached at edailing@rockfordartmuseum.org.



from the Nov. 7-13, 2007, issue

 

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