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Exhibiting new appeal | ||
[Q.]  Exhibiting new appeal | |
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Started By yuan Time:2008-7-1 21:08:10 [Reads:29] Back |
Exhibiting new appeal Yu Anjie has been a regular museum visitor for years. But the 12-year-old Beijing primary school student insists her motivation has nothing to do with popular Hollywood blockbusters, such as The Da Vinci Code and Night at the Museum. For her, the appeal comes from the ever-changing exhibits and educational programs offered by Dongcheng Art Center for Children. Like most of her classmates, Yu is heavily involved in extracurricular activities, and her parents push her to spend her spare time studying dance, music, English and math with private tutors. "But I take a greater sense of relaxation, fun and self-confidence from art lessons than any other extracurricular classes," she says. Yu was among the 30 school pupils aged between 8 and 12 attending a recent art class at the National Art Museum of China. The lessons revolved around an exhibition of German landscape paintings and the Synthetic Times International New Media Art Exhibition. In the first session, art educator Xu Weiwei from Dongcheng Art Center for Children and Zhao Xuechun from China Art Center for Children from Haidian district asked the kids to create their own stories after explaining to them world-renowned contemporary artist Xu Bing's interactive Book From the Ground. Xu's art deals with an interactive communication system using icons and signs he has spotted in public spaces or pictographic images he invented himself. When a visitor keys in a sentence on a computer connected to a large LED screen, the machine will generate a dialogue with the visitor in an alien language. Divided into several groups, the pupils sat in a circle in the exhibition hall, trying to figure out how to express their own ideas in the languages from Book From the Ground. They then tried again to decipher a Tang Dynasty poem written in the same strange language that turned out to be a poem written by the homesick Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai. Later, the pupils interpreted an unconventional painting by German artist Corinne Wasmuth in which enormous digitally rendered formats and excessively detailed figurative images are intertwined. "It is impossible for the youngsters to understand the deeper meaning of the painting. But by playing this game, we hope to cultivate their ability to link their life experiences with what they see in the exhibits," explains Ge Yi, a volunteer teacher from Central Academy of Fine Arts who hosted a lively discussion with the pupils. But the exhibition hall really began to buzz when the kids created their own collages from used fashion magazines, imitating the German artist's style. The in-gallery art lessons coincided with a two-day international conference on art education in museums. The Art Space for Education's Sake event attracted more than 100 museum administrators, art educators, art scholars and gallery owners from China and the US. They exchanged ideas on a broad range of topics, such as comparative studies of art museums in the two countries, art education policy and cultural identity. Tag phrase:Exhibiting new appeal Forums phrase:Exhibiting new appeal |
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