One day last week I went with Emma's class on a field trip to the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. I had never heard of the museum before our trip and it was a really neat place.
The artist needs to be from Wisconsin, or a current resident of the state in order to have their artwork on display. Much of the artwork was incredible, some of it was a little odd. The museum is in the process of moving to a new location, we were the 2nd to last school group that got a tour before their closure until April. I hope to go back after they re-open when we can spend more time going through the museum at our pace. There was at least one gallery that caught my interest but we didn't have time to see it.
Getting a good look at Robo-girl. She was quite interesting, made of pipes, aluminum scraps, and other various materials. Her heart was a lightbulb, she held a baby doll head in one hand and was smiling as a tear trickled down her cheek.
The museum had a really cool activity planned for the kids that I am not sure if it is available to all visitors, or just school groups, but it sure kept the kids engaged in all the artwork they saw. The kids started at this treasure box where they received a smaller box that revealed some clues about a piece of work they needed to find.
Once they found the artwork described in their box, they had to open their booklet and learn more about the piece and artist.
There was information in their booklets that they were asked to record, along with filling in missing pieces of the portion of the artwork they were given a snapshot of in their book.
Each of the students I worked with that day, which ended up being about half of Emma's class, seemed super excited about their scavenger hunt around the museum. I thought it was a great way to get the kids to explore the art!
This is an artist's portrait of Byron Kilbourn alongside Emma's portrait of him. She came pretty close, right? Along with a man named Soloman Juneau, Kilbourn was instrumental in the founding of Milwaukee. I wish I knew more historically accurate facts about the story, but from what I understand Kilbourn and Juneau's business relationship soured and the two men argued about almost everything during the development of the city. There is a Juneau Ave. and Kilbourn Ave. downtown with some bridges that make very awkward crossings of the Milwaukee River as a result of their fued and each man's individual attempt to stake his claim of the development there. Again, I'm not sure how well informed I am on the subject as I am trying to recall what I learned on a Jingle Bus tour, but I heard Kilbourn was the nicer of the two men.
Our tour ended with the kids getting to spend some time creating their own artwork using this huge pile of recyclables. The tour guide gave the kids some great news when she told them that since we were one of the last school groups to come through for the year, she was packing up half of the materials you see on the floor so they could take it back to their classroom for future art projects. The expression on Emma's teacher's face was priceless, just what they need, two large garbage bags full of...well, garbage. It was one of my favorite field trips!
No comments:
Post a Comment