It’s an exciting summer here at the Contemporary, especially for the talented area teens involved in the inaugural summer of our Teen Museum Studies program.  For six weeks, the Teen Museum Studies students are busy every Thursday and Friday exploring the inner workings of the museum.  They are meeting daily with staff gaining valuable insight into specific museum career paths and preparing for their ultimate goal of curating, planning, and executing their own student-led exhibition.

We’ve been lucky enough to have Director Paul Ha, Deputy Director Lisa Grove, Exhibitions Manager Cole Root, Public Programs Manager Alex Elmestad, Associate Curator Laura Fried, and Visitor Services Coordinator Kiersten Torrez give us great advice and support.  The staff has been an invaluable resource, generously giving their time and energy to help the Teen Museum Studies group develop goals and strategies for their exhibition.

So far the students have crafted their mission, began work on curating from the Flat Files (our fantastic source of local artwork), completed a registrar tutorial, and had a private tasting and tour (compliments of the Urban Studio Café) and were immersed in visitor services and public programming philosophy and strategies.  Not bad for the first 3 days!

The Teen Museum Studies exhibition opens July 20th in conjunction with the preview reception for City-Wide Open Studios… that leaves only 6 more program days to pull together what is sure to be a stellar show!

Check out TMS’ Facebook page for photo updates from each class day and be sure to stop by the opening July 20th at 6 pm!  With the energy and expertise we’ve seen from the TMS crew so far, I’m sure it will not disappoint.

Thanksgiving has passed, so now it is time to really get series about holiday gift giving! Most people don’t think about turning to art museums for wonderful gift ideas, so here is your chance to get in on the secret. MUSE gift shop, at the Contemporary, has many items on sale around the holidays. There is always something fun and unique on the shelves in MUSE. You can also give the gift of museum membership. This is truly a unique gift because recipients will receive membership benefits for an entire year AND the money you spend to purchase the gift goes towards supporting a cultural institution!

Another important gift you could make this holiday season is to New Art in the Neighborhood (NAN) students. This year, the Contemporary is focusing on raising funds for this important educational program. NAN is a pre-professional, scholarship-based program for high school students wishing to gain exposure and experience in the arts. The students spend each Saturday afternoon for a semester at the Contemporary creating and learning about art from museum staff, artists, and each other. One of the things that these students lack in their classroom is technology. In order to create and store artwork and portfolios, students need access to computers, printers, cameras, and more. You can make a difference in the lives of these teens by making a gift! Click here for more information and here to donate now.

Free Family Day is a program the Contemporary offers as a way for families to learn about contemporary art and participate in creating hands-on art activities together. An upcoming Family Day is on October 31…Halloween and is inspired by For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. Activities include decorating black cat masks, scary tales by a St. Louis Public Library storyteller, and creating a life-size haunted house scene! Also, in celebration of Halloween, children dressed up in a costume will be entered in a raffle to win a prize. You can find out more about Free Family Days here.

You can attend this upcoming Free Family Day at the Contemporary on Saturday, October 31 at 1:00 – 4:00 pm.

It was an exciting first day for the NAN program as students had the chance to work with one of the For the blind… artists, Dave Hullfish Bailey.

 After a walk-through the exhibition, the students worked with Mr. Bailey to create their own “God’s eye”, a weaving believed to have originated with the Huichol Indians of Jalisco, Mexico. The Huichol call their God’s eyes Sikuli, which means “the power to see and understand things unknown.” It is typically created with 2 sticks and yarn. The God’s eye makes a cross pattern with each side representing earth, water, fire, air and can represent cultural or personal mythologies and carry spiritual significance.    

This project related to Dave’s interest in the survivalist and nomadic lifestyles of the seasonal communities that inhabit an abandoned military base in California’s Imperial Vallery. These communities reflect some of the values of the politically radical movements of the 1960’s and have embraced some of the elements of what the God’s eye represents. It was a great history lesson and art project melded into one. 

After the session with Dave Bailey, the students attended Contemporary Conversations, a talk with artists Jimmy Raskin, Frances Stark, Dave Hullfish Bailey, and chief curator Anthony Huberman. Topics ranged from in depth discussions of their personal work to failure of the artistic endeavor. There was a lot of material to chew on and discuss for future classes!

The day ended with ice cream party. What more can be said about that. Ice cream makes everyone happy. 

It was a great first class, and I’d like to thank Dave Hullfish Bailey again for his wonderful work with the students and taking time out of his extremely busy schedule to work with the NAN program. It’s through his and other’s generosity that makes the NAN class a very special place to be.

On Museum Tours
By a new Contemporary intern, Megan

After visiting the Contemporary, I usually leave with many new thoughts swirling around in my head. For me, experiencing art is like opening the door to a room full of new thoughts and ideas. Each artist has a different way of thinking about art, emotion, gender, politics, religion, and even life itself. These ideas, when expressed in many different forms of art, have the capability to stir my imagination, to make me think about things differently. One thing I had never really thought about, though, was the process of giving a tour at the Contemporary. I recently followed a museum employee as she led a small group of high school art students on a tour of the works of Chantal Akerman and Carey Young. While watching her speak, I realized the hard work and passion that goes into leading each tour.

Contemporary tour guides act as instigators of ideas. They know each exhibition thoroughly, they understand some of the artists’ motives, and they have their own interesting ideas about each work. However, guides are not there to push their ideas; instead, they prompt visitors to think of their own. They explain, make comments, ask questions, and encourage each visitor to actually think about what they’re viewing.

The current Contemporary exhibitions aren’t of the “normal” types of art, works that can be seen or touched. Chantal Akerman’s show, Moving Through Time and Space, is a video installation in which visitors walk through galleries of movies and sounds. And in Carey Young’s exhibition, Speech Acts, visitors personally interact with call center agents through a telephone connection. At first, I didn’t know how to react to these unusual forms of art. But that’s where the tour guide came into play. She explained some of the artists’ ideas, introduced a few of her own, and then asked me to think about how I felt about the works. She pointed me in the right direction, then nudged me down the path of my own realization.

Art isn’t only something that can be seen, touched, or heard. Art is also created IN you, when you actively view it, and when it initiates the production of your own ideas. Viewers don’t have to accept everything they see or hear as the complete truth. Instead, they can form their own opinions; and the ability to do so is what makes each person, and his or her reaction, a work of art.

The tour guides at the Contemporary have introduced me to many new forms of artwork and prompted me to come up with my own ideas about everything with which I come into contact, whether or not it is normally considered “art.” And do you want to know one of my new ideas? Perhaps giving tours is an art form in itself.

 Last week I let you know about a collaboration the museum did with local high school, Metro Academic and Classical High School. On Tuesday, May 19 this collaborative project was dedicated at the school. Students were able to hear a little bit of background on how the project came to be and the work that went behind it. The sculpture “Untitled” Gathering Place is a wonderful addition to the schools grounds, and from the excitement that I witnessed from the students during the dedication, it will serve its purpose well. Click here to read more on the project and see the images from the dedication below.
    

For two years the Contemporary and Metro Academic Classical High School collaborated on a project through the Contemporary’s education program ArtReach. Now, this student-created sculpture is complete and ready to present to the public! The sculpture is called “Untitled” Gathering Place and will reside at the high school as a place for students to meet and mingle. It was partially inspired by Maya Lin’s sculpture, Peace Chapel at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA, as students became inspired by her work after studying it during her exhibition Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes at the Contemporary in 2007. These students worked incredibly hard to complete the planning, designing, and building and they also learned lesson about process and communication as they worked with each other, as well as with adults in their community. The public dedication of is on Tuesday, May 19 on the ground of their school. Everyone involved in this project should feel very proud!

The Contemporary has recently developed a new education program called Museum Studies 101. Two times a week for a little over a month, we invite students from the Clyde C Miller Career Academy to come into the museum and engage in a question/answer session with staff members and then complete a project based on the days topic. The idea behind the program is to give the students information on non-art related professions in the museum world. For my part of the program, I (along with our Marketing and PR Director and our Visitor Service Coordinator) discussed multi-media and visitor services. The students (being multi-media and hospitality students…yes, at this high school students chose “majors”) were interested in what we had to say. They also asked questions and were very engaged!

Okay, my friends. This website is truly unbelievable. I had to scroll through previous entries to see if I had posted on this before – and it appears as though I have not – but how oh how could I not tell you about the New Art in the Neighborhood studio online? I’ll let you explore it yourself, but here are the highlights: it allows high school students enrolled in our New Art program to create online portfolios that they can use to get into colleges and universities, a section of it highlights the colleges and universities across the country that have excellent art programs, it’s an online memory detailing past visits of artists that came to work with the students, it’s a yearbook, it’s a testimonial, it houses spectacular videos – with cool beats, no less, and it provides a way for you to not work during your day job and doodle on the website (please go explore). Most importantly, it was developed by the students in the program and serves as an outlet for them to show their projects and get others involved. Right now we’re accepting applications for the next year. Please apply (see details on website) if you’re interested.

This Friday is the Grand Center Gallery Walk – I believe it’s our 3rd or 4th one now. I’m proud to say that Rachel at the Pulitzer and I planted the seed that has now grown to be quite the event. More than 12 galleries in Grand Center will be open on Friday afternoon and evening, along with a few restaurants offering discounts and some activity on the streets. What I’m excited about (and still in the middle of planning) is a little behind-the-scenes gallery hop with our Director Paul Ha. He’s agreed to lead a small group of ArtLinkers (our Young Friends group) through the contemporary art galleries to meet their directors. We’re starting with ours – and highlighting our Flat Files programs (the educational piece is to show that you can start collecting now) and then we’ll make our way to the art galleries to speak to gallerists about the work they sell, how to talk to a gallerist and what options are available for those who wish to purchase art. Then we’ll end at the new Pace Framing shop, which just moved to Grand Center and talk about how art work is framed. It’s kind of the second-half of the ‘creation story’ – what to do with art after it’s made and offered for sale. Then, in July, we’ll get a glimpse at the first-half of this story – when we host Open Studios and we can visit with artists and hear them talk about how they work, while we see where they do what they do. It’ll be a great way to demystify the contemporary art world.

Ah, and did anyone happen to go to Hartford Coffee Company to see Free Candy last night? The talk show is witty, comical, and informative. Paul was on to speak about contemporary art, our mission, and our current exhibtion. He was also joined by the owner of the soon-to-be open grocery store featuring local products opening near Tower Grove Park, and a fabulous mind that has organized free movies to be shown outdoors in various venues – meant to construct community, conversation and a good reason to enjoy popcorn outside.