Where are you originally from?

I’m very proud to say that I was born and raised in Brooklyn.

Where do you go to school now and what are you studying?

I’m currently a senior at Swarthmore College, a small liberal arts school in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. I am studying Art and English Literature.

Do you have a favorite piece or collection here and why?

I had so many over the years! Growing up, I remember loving the statue of a standing Ibis in the Egyptian collection as well as Albert Bierdstat’s A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie.

Kiki Smith (American, born Germany, 1954). Born, 2002. Lithograph, 68 x 56 in. (172.7 x 142.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2003.17. © Kiki Smith

I think if I had to pick a favorite though, it would be either one of two prints by Kiki Smith: Born and After Lewis Carroll: Come Away From Her. It was after seeing these prints that I started to become familiar with her work, and from there, became very interested in modern and contemporary women artists.

What has been your most interesting experience here?

I think developing and giving tours while I worked as a Museum Apprentice was definitely one of the most interesting and important for me. I think especially at that point in my life having that kind of autonomy and freedom to make decisions and work independently was so crucial—it was an incredible learning experience for me, personally as well as academically.

What is was your favorite thing about Museum Apprentice?

I have so many amazing memories. I wish I could go back! We all had so much fun working together and it was like we were a family. Developing our own tours and presenting them to camp groups was one of the best learning experiences. I loved figuring out how to tailor the tours for different age groups.

Do you recall your first visit to the museum?

I think I must have been too young to remember it specifically. I remember one of the Arty Fact lessons was looking at art with food and then going back to the studio and making art depicting foods.

What was your experience like in the Gallery/Studio program?

I always loved when we worked outside in the Botanical Gardens. I especially enjoyed drawing and painting in the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden. Combining my love of nature with art making was perfect for me. While a Gallery/ Studio Work-Study assistant, I was always amazed by how creative and smart younger children were. My exposure to children’s responses to artworks helped with my teaching in Museum Apprentices.

What projects did you work on while interning in with Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art?

I assisted with two exhibitions coming up at the time. For Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864, I photographed and cataloged the doll and all of her accessories. For the Kiki Smith exhibition, Sojourn, I cataloged and archived images of the pieces included in the exhibition. I also researched and wrote the Feminist Picks of The Week for the Sackler Center Blog.

What do you want to do now that you’re almost finished with college?

I am really drawn to curatorial work and jobs that include a good deal of researching, writing, and closely engaging with art.

What advice do you have for teens interested in art or art history?

The most important thing for young artists and art historians is to go out and look at art, to get a sense of what kinds of images speak to you and inspire you. And if you don’t like everything you see, that’s okay too, but understanding why certain things spark your interest and why others don’t, and being able to articulate those reasons, is a great way to begin thinking critically about art. Visiting museums is especially important. They are the absolute best resources for learning about art and art history. I would also encourage teens to take part in art programs while in high school. There are some amazing programs out there and it’s a great opportunity to have a hands-on experience seeing and working with art.

I travelled down to Kutztown for a couple of days and took part as a learner and student. We practiced Encounters, which are flexible entry points into teaching the work, rather than prescriptive lesson plans. This included watching Right out of History: the Making of Judy Chicago’s the Dinner Party and attending a presentation by art historian and co-author of Gender Matters in Art Education, Dr. Martin Rosenberg or Rutgers University, Camden.

On the third day, I travelled back to Brooklyn with the group. While at the Museum, participants had the chance to view and discuss The Dinner Party with artist and creator Judy Chicago; hear a curator talk of Kiki Smith’s exhibition Sojourn; and part-take in a hands-on lesson I taught modeling learning activities in the Fertile Goddess Teacher Packet.

This lesson showed how The Dinner Party can connect to women and artworks across history and time by joining the Fertile Goddess plate setting to ancient goddess figurines.

While some participants had known about The Dinner Party for many years, others were learning about it for the first time. For any teacher interested in teaching about feminism, feminist art, or The Dinner Party, I highly recommend using the 14 Encounters found in The Dinner Party K-12 Curriculum Project.  I felt bonded to the participants I met through our passion for teaching and feminist art. I enjoyed hearing everyone’s stories of how they came to teaching art and the experiences that led them to want to learn more about Judy Chicago and The Dinner Party.

On Friday, May 14, Brooklyn Museum Apprentices visited The Metropolitan Museum for the teen event, A Conversation with Two Artists: Fashion!  Also attending the event were other teens from across the city. Jaehee Park, a design director at the Gap, and Andrew Bolton, Curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum discussed their influences and work/life experiences in the fashion world.

Jaehee Park showed off her sketch book and talked about the six t-shirts she designed in conjunction with The Metropolitan’s exhibition American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.  All six t-shirts are now on sale in Gap stores.  Andrew Bolton talked about exhibition design and made suggestions for those interested in becoming fashion curators. He recommends majoring in art or design history as an undergraduate and then focusing on fashion history in graduate school.

This teen event kicked off the T-shirt Design Competition for Teens being sponsored in conjunction with the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum. Teens entering the design contest must visit the The Metropolitan Museum’s fashion exhibition and Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition, American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection to gather inspiration and design ideas. The deadline for submissions is June 14, 2010.

Other teen events include a teen night at the Brooklyn Museum and a teen festival at The Metropolitan Museum. The Brooklyn Museum’s Teen Night: Focus on Fashion will feature a dance party, performances, and hands-on art making. The event will be held on Friday, June 4 starting at 5:00 pm in the lobby. Teens are encouraged to come dressed in fashions inspired by their favorite period in American history. The Metropolitan’s Teen Festival: From Suffragist to Sirens celebrates the winners of the T-shirt design competition on Saturday, July 17 from 11:00 am-2:00 pm. Hands-on art making activities will be features at the festival.

The committee began in December 2009, and launched its first Teen Night on February 5, 2010. Over 100 teens attended our first event, “Exploring the Arts of Asia.” Throughout the night, teen participants from all over the city partook in various activities: henna tattooing; yoga lessons taught by artist and yoga instructor Susanna Harwood Rubin; a martial arts demonstration and lesson by Marital Arts USA in Brooklyn; Chinese poker; and tours of the Asian Arts galleries led by participants in the Museum’s Student Guides program.

In March, Teen Night celebrated the artwork of Kiki Smith and her special exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Sojourn. The main activities of the night included exploratory hands-on art making activities and an open-mic session kicked off by members of the band Prodigy from the High School for Humanities in Manhattan and the hip-hop group ClasSicKids (pictured below) from Benjamin Banneker High School in Brooklyn. Gallery tours were hosted by Research Assistant for the Sackler Center, Sarah Giovanniello, who led a tour of Kiki Smith: Sojourn, and Molly Surazhsky, a former Senior Museum Apprentice, who led a tour of the Museum’s contemporary exhibition, Extended Family: Contemporary Connection.

The teens who take part in the Committee were selected based on their previous or current participation in the Museum’s existing teen programs, either the Museum Apprentice Program or the Work/Study Gallery Studio Program. The committee provides an opportunity for teens with advanced museum experience to gain new skills in events planning, promotion, and leadership while they utilize and expand upon their existing knowledge of art, art history, and museum education.

In creating Eye Spy, Adelia and I wanted to encourage visitors to look closely at the rich details of the paintings in the exhibition and help open a door to a sense of wonder and identification with the artist’s process. For example, a viewer might notice that bodies of water are not just blue, but include whites, pinks, greens, and oranges to show reflections of light and objects in the surrounding landscape. We also wanted to bring attention to the way Caillebotte intentionally used brushstokes to show movement and capture a sense of liveliness. By focusing on the details, we hoped to help reveal the artist’s process and show the visceral qualities these paintings offer.

If you have not seen these in the gallery and are curious, here’s a PDF version to peruse. In the gallery, the pages were laminated for durability and the guide was designed to sit alongside our other options for interpretation including the cell phone gallery guide, wall texts and object chat labels.