Currenty, the Whitney Museum in New York is carrying on educational activities such as these. But, they are preparing to move to a new museum site in New York's meat-packing district which will provide ample space to continue this teaching:
“So often education is a behind-the-scene activity either
relegated to a wing by itself or in the basement,” Mr. Weinberg said. “But for us education is part and parcel of what we do.”
The space is just the kind of thing the public wants these days. “Audiences today are more interested in participatory events, not just being talked to,” Ms. Potts said.
On a recent rainy Friday evening, a few blocks north at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a group was gathered for “Drop-in Drawing.” The program meets every two weeks in a different part of the museum, and this session convened in the new painting galleries of the American Wing.
Perched on folding seats, armed with clipboards, paper and colored pencils (all provided free by the Met), a group ranging in age from roughly 6 to upward of 65 listened with rapt attention as Pamela Lawton, a New York artist, explained how artists traditionally compose a canvas: with a foreground, a middle ground and a background.
The group then started sketching, inspired by examples of the Hudson River School painters surrounding them, including works by Jasper Francis Cropsey, Frederic Edwin Church and George Inness. After 20 minutes or so, the group moved to the nearby American Impressionist galleries, where Deborah Lutz, another artist, continued teaching.
“Programs like this are amazing,” said Kristine Mustillo, the principal of Public School 97 in Brooklyn, as she watched her daughters, Jillian, 8, and Emily, 9, create landscapes inspired by the 19th-century artist William Pickwell’s painting “Banks of the Loing.”
“Schools have cut back a lot, so you don’t get much arts education these days,” she said. “We’ve been to nearly every museum in the city.” (Jillian said her favorite so far was the New Museum because she loved the slide, by the artist Carsten Höller. Emily is a fan of the Museum of Modern Art, which has the best selection of works by Warhol, her favorite artist.)
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