On Friday, I took 20 of my kids to the Art Institute. When I say "my kids" I mean my students: we had just completed a study that I named Ritratto di Donna: Portrait of a Lady. To be able to participate in the field trip, each student was required to submit a portrait of a woman that is important to them. Our class camera went home with each student and returned with an interesting collection of women's portraits and each student will be writing essays in Italian on the woman he/she chose to depict. This week I'll work on printing out all of the lovely portraits, which I'll hand over to the class who will work at creating a large collage that we'll frame and display in our World Language corridor. Phew! Is it June 15th yet?
Taking students on a field trip is a huge endeavor: arranging for the bus, figuring out a non fast-food restaurant that will accomodate us for lunch (Corner Bakery on Michigan Ave.), planning the succession of galleries to visit, making the lecture interesting, and finding out a way to pay for it all. My goal is not so much to have them memorize factoids on artists and their works, but rather to see at least some of them leave with a desire to know and understand more about art in general, to be inspired to create or to learn to appreciate more.
We had our walk around the galleries, visiting with a Roman woman immortalized in stone, a sad woman staring at us with her beautiful necklace, and a young woman with a parrot nipping at her Rococo blouse buttons. Then I gave them 45 minutes to explore on their own. I gave them maps. I had them take their pencils and circle the spot where our bus driver would be picking us up at 1 p.m. "1 p.m.," I repeated the necessary 5+ times.
But of course you know 1 p.m. rolled around and I found myself standing alone at the meeting spot. They began to trickle in at about 1:10, but by 1:20 I was the mad lady speedwalking through the Art Insitute. I found one girl pondering a marble statue with a perplexed look upon her face and another group of three making a crayon rubbing of a medieval engraving with the help of a docent.
Had they been sitting in the institute cafeteria or shopping at the gift store, I'd have been angry. But I was happy that they'd lost track of time for art's sake.
I had asked them to write down what they thought the women being portrayed would say to them if they could talk. Jacques-Louis David's Lady Reading a Book said, "Leave me alone, can't you see I'm trying to read?!" Young Lady with a Parrot by Rosalba Carriera said "Be yourself too. I know you can. Be strong." It's funny how art finds a way of telling us at times what we need to hear.**
**my Ritratto di Donna project was generously funded via a grant from the Oppenheimer Foundation
**Rosalba Carriera, born in 1675, rose from a lower middle class Venetian childhood to a celebrated career as one of the first female portraitists.