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.