when art pisses you off

Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to sit in on, participate in and document a training session for the MCA's Artist Guides (AGs), the corps of practicing studio artists who lead conversation-based tours for school groups throughout the academic year. The training was fantastic, in that I got to meet most of the AGs and hear them talk about their art, how leading school tours fits into it, and their unique role within the greater institution.

During the latter half of the morning session, Marissa Reyes, Associate Director of Education, School and Teacher Programs, rolled out the MCA's freshly crafted vision statement, which serves as a complement to the museum's mission statement by stating not what the MCA is but what it aspires to be. AGs, staff, and myself then broke up into small groups to parse out particularly complicated sections of the statement, and came back together as a large group to share insights and come to a collective understanding of the vision's meaning through the lens of the AGs' work with students.

Part of the vision statement refers the MCA as an "audience-engaged platform for producing art, ideas, community, and conversation around the creative process." A common question among AGs was: How do we make our students self-confident enough to become truly engaged? One AG, Alex, noted that when you come into a museum, you're essentially a human being, flesh and bones, in a building, looking at stuff. How can we help others make something more from that "stuff," when it also means taking the risk of making mistakes? Rachel Harper suggested that in order to do that, we need to set up boundaries to keep the space safe and allow students to push up against those boundaries. Marissa suggested building empathy toward one's students by using oneself as a starting point.

Something else that came up was the necessity of encouraging kids to share their negative reactions toward pieces of art. The guides talked about their experience with a Richard Serra sculpture in an exhibit a few years ago, and how students hated it when they first saw it, but how after engaging with it, many of them changed their minds. The group agreed that certain works of art are valuable within tours for their ability to turn kids off, and that those works serve as great icebreakers.

Today, I was talking with another AG about the Minimalism show that's going up on Saturday, which will be the site of the bulk of fall school tours. She expressed her excitement for it, and her particular interest in leading high school students through it. "Because they'll understand the conceptual part of it better?" I asked. "Because it's going to piss them off," she replied.

People talk about art as a thing of beauty, of cultural and significance, as an emotional force or a historical object, but I like art best when it pisses people off. Because what makes them angry, makes them talk, and when people talk -- especially passionately -- they learn.

first week

my first week as the school and teacher programs intern at the mca chicago was awesome. things i love about it:

1. my supervisors are competent young women who are incredibly approachable and very open and excited to allowing me to pursue my own research and interests within the internship whenever possible;
2. the education department's offices are right next to curatorial's;
3. my first major project consists of retooling and extending the life of a wiki that came out of the summer teacher institute, and is going to be a lot of fun.

one of the great things about this internship is that it is going to give me a chance to do a lot of observing, reflecting upon, and talking about tours and other education programs, something that will certainly aid me in thinking about new strategies that can be used to privilege the visitor voice in museums. a few thesis-related thoughts that sprang up this week:

• one of my supervisors, talking about the koi pond on the first floor of the mca, noted that many of the artist guides use it during school tours to set the tone for the visit, and introduce the mca as a space that challenges preconceived notions of what a museum is. what a great way to knock down the authoritative voice a few pegs from the get-go: find a feature of the institution that defies the normal characteristics of the museum as temple, and use it to bring up the paradigm.
• the mca does a lot of work to maintain and strengthen relationships with a small group of teachers and schools. how can this be balanced with attracting new audiences to the museum, and what should be breakdown be between close-knit relationships with a select few and shallower relationships with a much larger public?