ADVOCACY

Photo by James Rees.

James Rees and Leslie Makai Gleaves

Making artwork visible in the public eye is the biggest advocacy tool teachers have to promote their programs and share the powerful way the arts can shape human potential. With many school systems not giving the arts the respect they deserve, art teachers may feel they’re constantly fighting for time, resources, and even validation for their programs. Our answer has been to make Provo High School’s art program more visible to the district and public through student art exhibits. This has not only helped students, but it has conveyed the importance of arts and its role in education beyond the classroom.

For the past five years, Provo High School students have become well-versed in the process of showing their artwork and curating and contextualizing their work in a thoughtful way. Students have found ways to collaborate with community and state partners, including a partnership with the Springville Museum of Art, a POPS (Professional Outreach Programs in the Schools) organization funded by the Utah State Legislature through the Utah State Board of Education

These collaborations have provided the ideal platform for the community to see firsthand how art transforms lives.

As host to the Annual Utah High School Art Show, a competitive juried exhibition now in its fiftieth year, the Springville Museum of Art strives to provide a professional exhibition opportunity for high-school students across the state. The museum offers students a place to present their finished artworks and works with local educators through an advisory committee that gives feedback and suggestions on programs and resources. Through this committee, a resource to teach students about curation was discussed and the Student Curators Guide was created.

This self-guided resource outlines the process of an exhibition from start to finish. It can be used as a full semester curriculum or pieced into sections and incorporated into an existing curriculum. Students are introduced to the various steps of exhibition development as they take on the major roles of an exhibition team and learn the importance of collaboration. They learn about and practice developing an exhibition thesis, write about exhibitions and artwork, create branding and marketing plans, find and understand gallery space, handle and install artworks, and manage an opening reception. Students come away understanding the process of relating, selecting, and analyzing works of art and the challenge of presenting work to an audience, with the expectation they should now make, explain, and justify connections between artists or artwork and social, cultural, and political history (Grade Hs advanced VA:Pr6.1.HSIII).

“Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this project is that students learn to value arts education and production for the critical thinking, innovative, and creative abilities exercised that relate to many other fields of academic and professional pursuit.”
—Dr. Rita R. Wright, director, Springville Museum of Art

Two years ago, after many years of practicing student curation, Provo High received an invitation from the owners of Provo Towne Centre, a local mall in Provo, Utah, offering a space to exhibit student work. Artcetera, a name students came up with, is a student-run gallery committed to representing student artists. Utah Arts Education Manager Jean Irwin states, “What began as a way to fill an empty space in a mall to attract the general public has evolved into an exceptional model for Utah school districts in the area of arts education.”

Artcetera provides opportunities for students to share, develop, and demonstrate their artistic, presentation, and community-building skills, all important for any student’s future. They experience in-depth knowledge of the presenting skills outlined in the National Core Art Standards: Anchor Standard four: Analyze, interpret and select artistic work for presentation, Standard five: Develop and refine artistic work for presentation, and Standard six: Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.

In addition to displaying artwork, students at Artcetera help run an artist lecture series and teach free workshops on Saturday mornings for preschool children and their parents. These opportunities invite the public to engage in the arts and explore societal questions, while empowering students with visual literacy tools that will have a long-term impact in their lives.

What began as a collaboration to teach student curating and presenting skills has helped one school evolve into something from which students, staff, and the public have received great benefit socially, academically, and educationally. These collaborations have provided the ideal platform for the community to see firsthand how art transforms lives.

James Rees teaches art at Provo High School in Provo, Utah. james@jamesreesart.com; Leslie Makai Gleaves is a museum educator at the Springville Museum of Art.