by Courtney Henson, Visitor Services Manager

St. Louis Art Museum docents are amazing.  For two full years the dedicated group has been planning and coordinating a huge effort: Hosting the 2011 National Docent Symposium. Over the past three days, docents from national museums have been in St. Louis and taking notes on the volunteer programs at multiple institutions here. There were guest speakers who rallied the group and breakout sessions that delved into wide ranging topics on how to assist your institution with the visitor viewing experience. “Docent”, “volunteer”, “gallery educator”. These are just a few of the names given at various institutions to the people who volunteer their time to help guests experience art. The Pulitzer had the great honor to co-host a dinner with CAM for about 100 docents and to run a workshop highlighting our Exploring Art program. 

I learned that the bulk of the docents from all over the United States and Canada had backgrounds as educators. They were not always art teachers and certainly not even always a traditional teacher, but their passion for education led them to pursue docenting. It became very clear that the job of a docent has changed over the past ten years, but each docent’s personal desire to encourage learning has evolved his/her process for interaction in the galleries. There seems to be a direct move away from didactic tours that are directly scripted and instead to engage the guests in conversations about the work. This is the approach taken at the Pulitzer. 

For our current exhibition we are trying something a little different. We are bringing together Buddhist practitioners and our PFA docents on the Mezzanine on the third and fourth Saturday’s of the month for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In Exploring Buddhism and Art , there are two minds for our guests to pick, one with expertise on the culture of Buddhism and one with expertise on the art and architecture of the Pulitzer. 

In 2013, the National Docent Symposium will be held in California, and I personally look forward to investigating how that city and the gathered docents have evolved their styles at that time. It was a truly rewarding experience to explain the Pulitzer’s methods as well as share ideas from around the country

Regina Martinez and Emily Augsburger, from the Pulitzer’s Community Projects department, stand in front of The Heidelberg Project in Detroit, MI.

Two weeks ago we traveled to Detroit to attend the Rust Belt to Artist Belt III conference. The mission of the conference was “to create the foundation for a sustained dialogue that connects an entire creative supply chain; from creative practitioners such as individual artists and designers, to creative sector business owners, to advanced manufacturers and prototypers”. The mission alone piqued our interests, and once we glanced through the panel topics, we knew we had to go. The conference started two years ago in Cleveland, Ohio, a city also grappling with its post-industrial identity. The conference moved to Detroit as the city has some words to offer on the matter. As native St. Louisans, we have witnessed a similar identity struggle here. But as we learn to address the challenge and what it means to be a post-industrial city, we are provided an amazing opportunity for transformation.

Rust Belt to Artist Belt provided a framework in which we could view the myriad of issues facing rust belt cities and how these issues can be addressed by using the resources within the creative community.  As conference participants we were asked to re-think artists and the creative community by acknowledging their very active role in our future-making. We agree that artists play an essential role in the revitalization of landscapes and the vibrancy and cultural connectedness of a place. The conference, however, focused so heavily on building the creative community by calling for new individuals to cities, that we feel it did not fully recognize the creative assets already present. We must recognize, support and connect the creative assets already alive in our cities.

Individuals participating in a panel discussion entitled “The Power of Race in Placemaking and Community Development” shared our sentiments. Not only was this particular panel discussion vital to understanding a community, the conversation is key to many Rust Belt cities. We all have prejudices.  Art is a means of facilitating conversations and social issues that have destroyed and isolated us in the past.  Artists express, artists can be anyone, and art has the capacity to build bridges across all divides.  Art and life are not so separate, and it can be through our collaborative storytelling that we grow to greater connectedness and understanding of one another. 

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Find out more about Swoon and this video on Saint Louis Art Map.

Robert E. Gard

In the third weekend of September, I attended the Gard Symposium in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference was dedicated to the life work of Robert E. Gard, a community arts developer out of Wisconsin. Robert E. Gard is known for his community work in theatre, creative writing and folklore. (To read more about Robert E. Gard and his foundation, please click here). The symposium, inspired by Gard’s life work, called participants to discuss the future of community arts development.

I made the journey to Madison with a friend from the social work program at Washington University (she is also the founder of the Community Arts Initiative at the Brown School). We attended the conference to hear the testaments of those who have been actively bridging the arts with unlikely sectors. The symposium aimed to address “healthy communities” by presenting viewpoints of seemingly different disciplines: economics, sociology, technology, politics, religion and social work. Community arts practitioners responded to each discipline’s approach to a healthy community by offering ideas in which the arts might be integrated. It is important to note that healthy, in the symposium and the social sciences speak, refers to an overall, holistic health.

Though the presenters provided strong evidence of the powerful abilities of integrating the arts into diverse sectors, I was particularly moved by the expressed views of Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton. The Lt. Governor’s perspective was fresh, independent and innovative, as she understood that the arts were not only essential a healthy community but also an integral aspect of democracy. As stated in her paper written for the symposium, the Lt. Governor writes, “[the arts and humanities] provide the creativity and spontaneity and sense of freedom necessary to fuel the ongoing struggle that is democracy. A politically healthy community invests in the arts to ensure the context and conditions that will make it robust and prosperous.” It is my hope that symposia such as this catapult community arts development into common dialogue.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a symposium titled, “Breaking the Rules of Engagement: New Perspectives on Thinking about Art,” at the Denver Art Museum, or DAM, as it is so lovingly called. The weekend included art, culture and new ideas about museum goers and supporters. I explored the museum and city, but  I was there particularly to meet with other museum professionals and discuss the future of docent programs.

The symposium centered on new ideas in docent presentations. Three interesting speakers at the conference were James Chung, Michael Cassin and Shelly Casto. They talked about tapping into proven trends and integrating new and creative ways to actively engage a visitor’s quest for the visual. Many discussed that the old ideas about tours were not the way to entice audiences. Instead, engaging in interesting conversations surrounding the work of art is the preferable method. Read the rest of this entry »