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somewhat unusual among large urban museums. The Cincinnati Art Museum, for instance, offers monthly sketching and crafting workshops, and even the financially troubled Detroit Institute of the Arts offers one-day workshops in various media. Yet art museums with multi-week versions of such classes year-round, as the Carnegie had till now, also appear exceptional. The Baltimore Museum of Art, for instance, has an “interactive gallery” that only sometimes includes hands-on activities. Even New York’s mighty Metropolitan Museum of Art offers only informal, twice-monthly “Drop-in Drawing” sessions in the galleries, and other workshops running one to three days each, more or less monthly. Some museums that run multi-week classes are either also accredited art schools — like the Art Institute of Chicago — or institutions rather larger than the Carnegie. One big museum with a large adult program is the Cleveland Museum of Art, which last year served 3,100 enrollees. “Art appreciation is our goal, and education is in our mission, and one way people learn is by doing,” says that
museum’s director of intergenerational learning, Seema Rao. “To get this appreciation might be about honing their own skills.” “We really value the art-making process,” says Karen Satzman, who leads adult studio programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Students, for instance, can learn the finer points of the “hand” of a great artist by studying the museum’s works, she says. “What better way to get your mind into it than by having that experience [of making art] yourself?” “When you start taking a class at the museum, you are making so many connections to the museum” and its artworks, Satzman adds. Satzman says that while 10-week classes have limited appeal, the museum’s five-week courses are popular: “It’s a commitment for students but not too much of a commitment.” LACMA also holds oneday, exhibit-specific workshops of the type the Carnegie now favors. Rao acknowledges that many museums don’t offer multi-week classes because “[i]t takes a lot of work.” On the other hand, she says, “We’re really lucky, because people really like them.”
“AN ART MUSEUM WITHOUT CLASSES IS DIMINISHED IN ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO THE COMMUNITY.”
D RI S C OL L @ P G HC I T Y PA P E R. C OM
{BY MATT BORS}
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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 08.07/08.14.2013
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