Portfolio Plus Pays a Visit
July 9th, 2009
Yesterday, before the Pulitzer opened for regular hours, Washington University’s Portfolio Plus program came from CAMSTL through the courtyard to study Ideal (Dis-) Placements. Led by local artists and art instructors, Belinda Lee and BJ Vogt, this visit was part of the summer workshop’s aims at introducing high schoolers to art galleries, to familiarize them with the art world and prompt in-class assignments.
Running since 2004, Portfolio Plus is geared at preparing teenagers, local and nation-wide, for art school by enhancing their portfolios and earning them 6 college credits. In the mornings, the students study Drawing and 2D/3D, and in the afternoons, they’re offered a variety of electives. Lee pointed out that many of the graduates go on to Wash U’s art college. (Why aren’t more universities offering this sort of thing?)
For their field trip yesterday, Vogt asked the teens to think about how the works in both the Contemporary and the Pulitzer were installed and how they relate to each building’s design. One student Hallie told me how she enjoyed the way the light looked in the Pulitzer’s galleries and said, ”I like how the setting is modernized but has these Old Master paintings–how they should seem out of place, but they don’t.”
Lee asked the students to consider the difference in imagery between the Old Masters and CAMSTL’s current exhibition of Chantal Akerman and Carey Young. She particularly wanted them to observe the difference between the idealization in Old Masters as opposed to the “hyperrealism” in Chantal Akerman’s films–how convenient to have different but both excellent exhibitions next-door to highlight complementing ideas.
