Visiting an art museum is an opportunity to learn about the lives and stories from history with a fresh perspective. Every piece of art tells a unique story, and by studying them, we can experience the emotions of the artist by seeing the world through their eyes in the artwork they created. Art inspires us to be curious.
New Buffalo art students connected with Michigan State undergraduate students studying Museum Education who presented workshops on the Broad Art Museum's collection. We scheduled a Zoom meeting for a Friday session during my middle school and high school art classes that was displayed on the smart board while the students followed along on their computers for direct interaction with their guest speakers.
In partnership with the MSU African Studies Center, the museum education program introduced the portraits of Malian photographers from the exhibition, "Africa is not a Country: Art from Africa and the African Disaspora." The MSU interns led a walkthrough of the museum to the basement vault where the artwork is kept and began with an opening discussion on our own first impressions of Africa and comparing the size of the United States to the country of Mali.
The museum education interns explained that Africa is the second largest continent in the world with 54 countries and over 2,000 languages. The students counted how many times they could fit the state of Michigan into Mali while the interns hovered the country over America.
When describing the art and culture of Mali, we learned that Malians were photographed without consent by early explorers which did not reflect who they were as people. Photographers like Tijani Sitou commissioned portraits of locals who wanted to remember important milestones in their lives.
The students were asked to analyze the Sitou's work with what they noticed from his photographs and think about the deeper meaning and symbolism within the portraits.
Students volunteered to share their observations with the interns in a group discussion before they explained to the class the individual stories and traditions from Malian culture in the photographs.
Following the class critique, the students were given time to reflect on what they had learned and create a symbolic self-portrait symbolizing what was important to them. Some students drew in their sketchbooks and others complied personal photos in Photoshop during the independent studio time. They posted their observations and artwork to a class padlet to share with our guests.
A separate session titled, Mapping Personal Stories, was offered in the Art III high school class looking at two indigenous artists who use maps to show what is important to them. This workshop challenged my students to reconsider what they define as a map when looking at the work of MSU professor, Dylan Miner.
This artwork, "Water is Sacred," is map of the Kalamazoo River created with a petroleum based material symbolizing the 2010 oil spill.
Miner is a Michigan native of Wiisaakodewinini (Métis) descent who explores the degradation of regional resources, capitalism, and colonialism with the history and culture of Anishnaabewaki, the Indigenous Great Lakes region. The students reflected on the complexity of the artwork and how the artist might have used these materials to bring interest and awareness to the issue.
The physical nature of Miner's Water is Sacred was contrasted with a digital installation made by the artist, Caroline Monnet, who made a video titled Bridging Distance from the viewpoint of a cargo ship while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. We put initial observations in the Zoom chat of our interpretations of the mood and emotions while experiencing this journey from the artist's perspective.
The video was a recorded map of her journey on the ship separating the time and distance it took to travel between two continents. Caroline Monnet is a contemporary indigenous artist from Ottawa, Canada with Algonquin and French descent. She used this journey to symbolize her identity and ancestry between the places that she's from while traveling from one country to another. The students reflected on their own connections to the artists by creating maps to document their personal stories with places they've been or want to go.
The MSU Broad virtual workshop focused on building the students' creative thinking skills and exploring diverse perspectives. Art museums preserve the legacy of humanity as well as the connections to people and places in our lives today. I appreciate the opportunity for my classes to interact with the MSU undergraduates who used their passion for art history to share their knowledge with the next generation of artists.
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