After the Mid-Term meeting, reflect upon your VTS experience with real art objects in the Museum of Art & Archaeology. How do museum experiences differ from experiences with digital images and/or prints? What benefits would a museum VTS experience have for your students? What obstacles would need to be overcome?
Museum VTS experience has always given me a great inspiration since the first meeting. Dealing with real art objects, I could think more deeply about the works of art. Especially for sculptures, museum environment is a much better place than any kinds of classroom because we could enjoy a three-dimensional effect and delicacy that are hardly embodied by digital images or prints. Even real pictures in museum have same advantages. I could appreciate more detailed expressions and liveliness through watching the real art objects. These strengths of museum VTS experience would help students not only get more motivation but also grasp an intention of the artists. Besides, the atmosphere of museum is superior to those of classroom. Museum is full of artistic curiosities. Students could have a chance to feel artist’s soul and anguish by seeing various real art objects even if they are not related to VTS lessons and they can also make connection between the art works through comparing or contrasting in terms of making meaning process. I believe these advantages make the quality of discussion higher.
However, there could also be various difficulties in museum environment. Since museum is a public place, other people could be standing around the VTS group and there would also be some noises. These weak points could make students lose concentration on the discussion. In addition, the position of students wouldn’t be fixed but actively movable to see art works, especially in case of sculptures, so facilitator could also feel distracted by the situation. The signs which provide more information about artworks always attract visitors’ attention but in the VTS lesson which pursues open-ended discussion, signs could be obstacle students have to overcome. Facilitators of VTS have to persuade them not to read signs before or during the lesson for better discussion.
I believe if facilitators choose the museum VTS lesson, they have to consider these following possible obstacles.
. There would be noise which interrupts the lesson. choose the time when there would be the least people in the museum so that they could minimize the noise
. Young children could lose their concentration or interests in the lesson in open environment.
. When dealing with sculpture, facilitators as well as students could be distracted.
. Students would want to see the signs to get more information before or during the lesson.
I love how you phrased it, a museum IS full of artistic curiosities! I am so envious of my classmates who can visit and take their students to visit those curiosities on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteI can't stop thinking about the child sarcophagus I VTSed. Who created it? How long did it take? What happened to the child? I'm anxious to revisit that piece.
You are right about other museum visitors being potential distractions. At one of my VTS trainings in New York at the Metropolitan Museum, we were VTSing a piece and a woman interrupted our conversation and corrected our interpretation! She didn't know what VTS was, but did know a lot of art historical information about the work. It really ruined the discussion.
ReplyDeleteI really like it when, in a museum situation, a participant reveals the title to everyone and it's a title that is ambiguous and doesn't explain the image at all. Sometimes, comparing the title to the work at a later date and trying to figure out how it is related to the image is exciting, too.