Teaching From Galleries

The Power of Galleries in Education

IPTS 8: The competent teacher builds and maintains collaborative relationships to foster cognitive, linguistic  physical, and social and emotional development. This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members. 

As a teacher, collaborating with art professionals and galleries is a great way to foster social and cognitive development for students and teachers. Students get exposed to real world art situations. Students often remember and benefit more from field visits. It can also connect a community closer to local schools through gallery exhibitions and support of the gallery by student attendance.

IPTS 9: The competent teacher is an ethical and reflective practitioner who exhibits professionalism; provides leadership in the learning community; and advocates for students, parents or guardians, and the profession. 

What better way to advocate for the arts than to support a community gallery? By making students, parents and locals aware of the power of the arts through varies gallery shows, one might appreciate and value the arts more. Also engaging with galleries can provide leadership for the school in that teachers are taking the extra step to expose students to real professionals int he art world. 

The Ann Nathan Gallery is a well respected gallery in Chicago. They accept and sort through all entries of art, but primarily focus on traditional art mediums. They range in artists, everyone from newcomers to the art world to regulars that have work up on a consistent basis. Ann Nathan owns the gallery and curates all of the shows. Overall a very friendly place with friendly staff. Highly recommend for students. I quote from a staff member during an interview I conducted in Fall of 2014, "Of course we want kids to come see art, they are the future of art. They are the future artists and art curators."

Source: http://www.annnathangallery.com/about/

            Viewing the Ann Nathan Gallery through the lens of an educator has been incredibly enlightening about the importance of field visits for students of all ages. In particular, this gallery was about showing emerging and established artists and a variety of works. This gallery supports diversity, which is parallel with the kind of diversity one should support in the classroom space. Showing students that all kinds of work are valid and have meaning allows for an even playing field. Additionally, exposing students to multiple cultures through artwork allows students to think critically about viewpoints other than their own.

            Also, by looking at these artworks, students can enrich their visual culture. Many artworks deal with important personal and global issues. These artists all have different viewpoints on issues. For example, in the Ann Nathan Gallery, many of the works dealt with feminist ideas, war, and consumerism. Instead of merely depositing the information about these relevant issues, one should instead go to galleries where students can actively discuss and break down artworks and come to their own conclusions about these topics. Not only will students enjoy this kind of structure more, they will retain the information and be able to do more than regurgitate facts. They will be able to use real life examples and situations when looking at these artworks. It is clear that visiting galleries is a valuable experience and should not only enhance learning, but looking at artwork in the gallery context should be at the center of art education.

For more information about the gallery see: Ann Nathan Gallery