EARLY CHILDHOOD

First-Grade Art Museum entrance with color field studies. 

Georgia Henkel

Because most of the students had never been to an art museum, we scheduled a visit to our local museum at the University of Kentucky. Museum director Stuart Horodner engaged these aspiring museum developers with a behind-the-scenes tour, a meet-and-greet with museum staff, and a full treatise on museum management and organization.

Students experienced the open-ended nature of the empty boxes as a playful challenge and deep learning experience.

Following our visit, students decided they needed more boxes to create their museum. Fortunately, an appreciative parent provided two additional large boxes which became another gallery and a gift shop.

Closeup of museum (including security guard vest and handcuffs). 

At this point, other classes were envious of the opportunity to play with boxes and began using them as spaces for free drawing and quiet time. The boxes took up considerable space in the art room, so they had to function as part of our community workspace.

While the interior and exterior of the museum were painted with colors chosen by student directors and staff, student artists were busy producing artwork that would be selected by the curators. We began each class with questions including: Who pays for museums? Why are some museums free? Who chooses the artwork? Who hires museum staff?

Students chose museum roles based on acquired knowledge: directors, curators, docents, archivists, a board of directors, gift shop workers, and security guards. It was the board of directors’ decision that every student would be represented by one artwork for each exhibit.

We had more artwork than the walls could handle, so a major fundraising campaign began to build more storage. This was accomplished by selling magnets and handbags made from fabric samples embellished with student art. The proceeds went to storage expansion. It was also a board decision to make the museum free and accessible to all people. The financial underbelly of running a museum created an opportunity for math integration. Students created fake currency and quickly established a system of accounting.

Student Marian shows off her soft sculpture museum visitor.

The inaugural exhibit was curated, marketed, and hung by museum personnel. The museum grew so large that we had to move it to a more central location. This allowed for more community engagement, and soon the entire school was learning about artworks from the first-grade docents.

During our fall break, a student went to Chicago’s Millennial Park and the Art Institute of Chicago. She burst into the art room full of ideas for the museum’s future. This led to a study of contemporary sculpture. Students soon created a sculpture garden which featured their own versions of Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor, Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg, a giant spider inspired by Louise Bourgeois, and benches inspired by Jenny Holzer.

Plans began for a second exhibit, this time with a focus on Latinx artists. Working with the Spanish teacher, students learned about artists Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, Vik Muniz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Joan Miró, and created artworks inspired by them.

Participatory installation inspired by the late Cuban-born American artist, Felix Gonzalez-Torres. 

During the spring art exhibit, the museum had its second opening with students giving tours, sharing their artwork and knowledge of artists, and selling their wares from the gift shop.

Even with multiple large boxes and a sculpture garden, there wasn’t enough room for an entire class to be in the museum at the same time. Students were challenged with figuring out the size of an average museum visitor based on the size of the benches, ceiling, and paintings. Then they drew pictures of museum visitors, which inspired our final challenge.

The idea for My Twin was to recreate all the museum visitor drawings as soft sculpture dolls and display them in the museum. As the sculptures roamed around the museum, they would interact with their “twin” drawings and see themselves as part of the art experience.

This was clearly a project that fed upon itself in the most beautiful ways, both pedagogically and aesthetically. The First-Grade Art Museum reflects the possibilities that abound when curious and passionate young artists are given a few large boxes!

Georgia Henkel is an art teacher at Sayre School in Lexington, Kentucky. ghenkel@sayreschool.org
First-Grade Art Museum