Meg Salocks

Arts Ed in Museum Spaces: Maine’s Own, the Farnsworth Art Museum

Posted by Meg Salocks, Jan 23, 2015 1 comment


Meg Salocks

The Farnsworth Art Museum is a small art museum in Rockland, ME – approximately 70 miles north of the state’s capital – that is really anything but small. Founded in 1948, the museum’s collection was designed specifically to celebrate “Maine’s role in American Art.” With this in mind, it is not at all surprising that the Farnsworth Art Museum’s current focus is building “life-long connections” with all the diverse and divergent audiences in Maine’s mid-coast region.

Image Source: Farnsworth Art Museum Facebook Image Source: Farnsworth Art Museum Facebook

 

farns5 Image Source: Farnsworth Art Museum Facebook

 

In seeking ways to establish such deep connections with all age groups, the Farnsworth has taken a focused approach to providing specific, targeted, educational opportunities that balance their art and offerings with real-life and school topics for children of many ages. While they also offer studio classes and tours in the museum, what we will focus on today are these deeper points of connection and education for local students. In order to foster proactive learning that includes the arts, the Farnsworth mode of operation is simple:

  • Identify an age group and key issues and interests that group faces
  • Develop a small pilot program that integrates arts education with those issues and interests
  • Over the following several years, adapt and build the program out to more schools and more students

There are two programs in particular that demonstrate this arts education tactic that serve as valuable case studies for those of us in the museum education world.

Growing an Arts Integration Initiative

First, noting a significant gap in educational opportunities for students in the rural schools on the islands of Penobscot Bay, the Farnsworth spearheaded a powerful partnership with local schools across the mid-coast region. Inspired by a potential opportunity to inject arts education into public education curriculum and reconnect them back to the Rockland community, they proposed and received a generous grant from the NEA for “Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth,” to build up such a partnership.

In its first iteration, the program – then aptly named “Building Bridges” – was designed to be a visual arts mentoring project that would connect teenagers living on isolated islands in the bay with repeat visits from professional artists to develop and hone skills in painting, drawing, and more. By 2009, the program had taken a specific focus to celebrate and reflect on Maine island- and rural-life and was reaching students ranging from 6 to 14 years old.

Image Source: Farnsworth Art Museum Facebook Image Source: Farnsworth Art Museum Facebook

 

Now, by 2014, the program had evolved and expanded to six schools and over 260 students in the 4th and 7th grade. (Yes, Maine is small – but also beautiful!) In addition, it is now a full-fledged arts integration initiative and collaboration between the Farnsworth Museum, local public schools, professional artists, classroom teachers, and museum-sponsored art teachers. Dubbed the “Stories of the Land and its People,” the program has grown to include:

  • Pre- and post-program quantitative and qualitative evaluation;
  • Repeat visits of an arts educator to the schools;
  • Field trips between isolated communities and Rockland; and
  • A hugely popular final exhibit in the museum to display students’ work.

Art as a Vehicle for Teens

Turning to another age group, the Farnsworth Art Museum staff next decided to address the growing population of teenagers in the Rockland area. In an effort to make a meaningful impact and provide a valuable arts-learning experience for these students either afterschool or in the summer, the museum initiated a teenage film studio program in Julia’s Gallery, one of their two on-site education centers.

For the past four years, middle school and high school students in the program work and learn together with a professional film director and instructor to create, film, and produce their own works. The films often tackle difficult social issues – such as teenage homelessness, social pressures, and more – while introducing the young filmmakers to new mediums like claymotion, stop motion, pixilation, and live action. They have also dedicated an entire film project to documenting this past year’s “Stories of the Land and its People” arts-integration program, allowing the teenage film students to follow the program with their cameras, interview both museum and school leaders on the expectations and challenges of such a large project both before and after, and to document classes on a whole. Feel free to check out past films on their Vimeo page.

This “Young Filmmaker Program” is an intensive commitment for local teens – it requires them to dedicate three to four months of regular meetings and relies on the students to be responsible for their learning, deadlines, and final product. And, as an extra reward, the films produced in this program are not published online but shown at an official screening at Rockland’s very own movie theatre. Responsibility, creativity, and pride all in one.

What the Farnsworth Can Teach Us

To combine these two powerful programs with everything else the Farnsworth Art Museum is doing – professional development workshops for teachers; studio classes; early childhood and senior arts learning activities; and more – the final picture that emerges is that of a entire little arts education solar system swirling around the encouragement and hard work of this museum.

I would venture that the education department at Farnsworth functions on three main pillars - childhood arts education, teenage arts education, and professional development in arts integration - that have allowed them to assemble such a tightly-knit ecosystem. They identified three key points of education (kids, teens, and teachers) and developed incredibly rich programs to address each on their own terms. For those of us in the museum education world, the Farnsworth presents a fascinating example of how to segment your audiences on a very local and direct scale. They don’t shy away from a challenge - be it schools with absolutely no arts programs, or hard social topics facing the town - but instead identify the problem and get to work, using their art as a vehicle, education resource, and holistic learning experience to address those challenges.

1 responses for Arts Ed in Museum Spaces: Maine’s Own, the Farnsworth Art Museum

Comments

January 26, 2015 at 10:51 am

Thanks for this terrific piece on the Farnsworth, one of my favorite small museums. Just a note that Rockland is 70 miles north of Portland, the largest city in Maine, but not the capital, which is Augusta.

  • Please login to post comments.