Teaching Artist Workshop

I observed a teaching artist workshop at the Art Institute of Chicago that allowed "tweenagers" 9-12 year olds to learn from a practicing artist that is prominent in Chicago. This was such an interesting concept to me as I have been involved with workshops taught by educators who are also artists, but educators formost, but this was my first time observing a practicing artist teach. It was a truly interesting experience, and allowed me to see democracy in a museum education setting. Workshops like this are always free with museum admission or membership, which allows the workshop to become accessible to many individuals as museum admission is free for youth under 12. The workshop consisted of a gallery lesson that included drawing and a studio activity. Leslie, the teaching artist led the students in a tour of the drawing rooms to discuss different types of line in works of art followed by a drawing activity of two head sculptures in the chinese art section. What was striking to me is there was no reference to culture between the tour. Culture was not mentioned, but no object was considered more or less important than the other, they were just equal art objects used for the education of the participants.
After the drawing lesson in the gallery we made our way back to the museum education studios where the tweens were asked to experiment with drawing different ideas. Leslie used a very demecratic approach to teaching where she allowed the students to learn from their own experiments and to decide what they would do on their own. They were allowed to use whatever materials and papers they wanted and create whatever kinds of lines. She stated "you can ask me if you can do something, but most of the time the answer will be yes." The students learned from their own experimentations as she facilitated the workshop. It was an interesting approach to teaching in a museum that really worked with a democratic system. power and decision came from all parties like we talked about with Foucault, and it produced interesting and powerful results as all of the students left fulfilled and learned a lot about experimenting and choosing their own materials in that experimentation. It redefined the way typical education is handled.