Art as Experience: 80 Years of Innovative Learning with MoMA 11/10/2017, 11(49

Art as Experience: 80 Years of

Innovative Learning
with MoMA
Wendy Woon Oct 4

This is the first in a series of posts celebrating the 80th anniversary of The
Museum of Modern Arts formal commitment to museum education.
Wendy Woon is MoMAs Edward John Noble Foundation Deputy
Director for Education.

Democracy in Print Workshop, August 31, 2017, The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Beatriz
Meseguer/onwhitewall.com. 2017 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

In 1929 The Museum of Modern Art, founded with an educational charter,

opened with the mission of encouraging and developing the study of
modern artsand furnishing popular instruction. This year marks the
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80th anniversary of the start of MoMAs formal commitment to museum

education, which was initiated through a two-year pilot Educational
Project. That project established an experimental, art processdriven, and
inclusive approach to education that put the civic role of arts education at
the heart of the Museums identity. Through innovative learning spaces,
embracing emerging technologies, exhibitions, scholarly conferences,
programs, publications and media, community engagement and activism,
and politically enabled outreach, MoMA was and continues to be
recognized as a global leader and champion for the importance of art
education for all.

The Museum of Modern Art Charter, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1929.
Museum Charter Box 1. The Museum of Modern Art Archives

Over the coming weeks, members of our Board of Trustees and Trustee
Committee on Education, along with leaders within the Department of
Education and colleagues from MoMAs Library and Archives, will
contribute articles celebrating this anniversary. Each brings a unique

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perspective to how the past informs the present; envisions some of the
challenges of engaging new, diverse, and more inclusive publics with art in
a rapidly changing culture; and considers the multitude of opportunities
that lie ahead. We are all united in the belief that art matters deeply, that a
life lived with art is a life well lived.

Yet not everyone has equal access to the arts.

Thats why I became curious about the founding values that shaped
MoMA. What I found is that innovation, leadership, and increasing reach
through new technologies are not new strategies at the Museumthey are
deeply rooted in our DNA. Today, Im going to give you a little taste of that
history, as I am only beginning to learn about it myself. I am grateful to
David Rockefeller, Jr., who, as Chair of the Trustee Committee on
Education in 2011, helped secure the return of the archives of the first 32
years of the departments history.

In this first post, Id like to share with you a bit of this founding
institutional history and focus on our early experimentation with spaces
for creative learning.

The founders of the Museum, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie Bliss and
Mary Sullivan, were not only interested in experimental art, they were also
advocates of experimental approaches to art education. Mrs. Rockefeller
sent her children to the Lincoln School, a pioneering experimental school
for newer educational methods. And an experimental approach is what
MoMA chose in 1937, 80 years ago.

Nelson Rockefeller commissioned a 193536 report, by Artemis Packard,

in anticipation of The Museum of Modern Arts 1939 expansion (a timely
parallel to our upcoming 2019 expansion). It articulates, in essence, the
dual strands of our DNA: the search for what is best in art according to
the highest standards of critical discrimination and, on the other hand,
the provision of popular instruction in accordance with public need. It

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also presciently notes the tension between these two, stating that at times
these objectives will seem mutually antagonistic, but that ultimately
they will be found to complement each other.

Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson Cobb, another visionary woman, took up the

challenge and raised the money to create the two-year Educational Project
pilot, seeking out Victor DAmico to lead it. DAmico was an inspired
choice; in 1935 he had traversed the nation researching a Rockefeller
Foundationfunded report on the state of art education; he headed the art
department at Fieldston; and he had worked in settlement houses.
DAmico is increasingly recognized a leading figure in progressive modern
art education, championing art as experience, and teaching methods
aimed at developing the creative potential every citizen.

For me, DAmicos most interesting contribution is his extensive

experimentation, from the 1940s through 1969, with laboratory-like
spaces, which provided inspiration for MoMA Studio, which we began
seven years ago; our most recent experiment, the Peoples Studio: Design,
Experiment, Build, which has drawn more than 82,000 participants into
the creative process since mid June; as well as our annual Art Labs,
interactive spaces designed for families.

The Young Peoples Gallery was the first dedicated space and program for
education at The Museum of Modern Art. The aim of this educational
experiment was to make the Museums collections more accessible to New
York public and private schools, with a particular focus on inclusivity
across racial, national and religious differences, low and high mentality,
gifted and average art ability, verbal and manual individuals, students
trained and untrained in the arts. The space hosted educational
exhibitions (on Bauhaus pedagogy, for example), conversations,
demonstrations by artists, and other activities.

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From left: Each Veteran Is Different, Individual Instruction, panel included in the exhibition, Art for
War Veterans, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 26November 25, 1945; Student at
work, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, (c. 194448). Both images Victor DAmico Papers, III.A.4.
The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

The Second World War prompted the pioneering War Veterans Art Center
(194448), a passion project of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, which was
focused on discovering the best and most effective ways of bringing about
through art the readjustment of the veteran to civilian life. Many of the
techniques developed then are still in use today.

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Mrs. White and her son, Joseph, making constructions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 19,
1954. Victor DAmico Papers, III.C.42. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

By 1949, the program evolved into the Peoples Art Center, a laboratory for
creative teaching with 800 children and 500 adults attending weekly.
Instructors included Josef and Anni Albers, Sol LeWitt, Robert Indiana,
Chaim Gross, and more. Students included Robert Ryman, Jean Michel
Basquiat, Barbara Walters, Stephen Shore, and Adrian Piper. Amazingly,
through the Peoples Studio this summer weve met many people who
participatedas children, adults, or even teachersat the original
Peoples Art Center, and they are providing us with great insights into what
fosters a relationship with a museum over a lifetime. And in the Peoples
Studio weve continued to engage artists and designers with the public,
including Ellen Lupton, Damon Rich, Jae Shin, Raul Cardenas Osuna, Fritz

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Horstman, David Benjamin, Cory DAugustine, Paula Stuttman, Kerry

Downey, and Shellyne Rodriguez.

The Annual Childrens Art Carnivals at the Museum (194260s) were

imaginative spaces designed to engage children in art processes. Kids from
three to 12 years old would pass through the enchanted child-sized gate
into a two-part space that included interactive experiencesthe
motivational spacefollowed by a hands-on space where they could
develop their own creativity through making. The only adults allowed in
were the teachers, who acted more as facilitators, following each childs
lead in creative exploration.

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Eugene Grigsby with little girl at the Childrens Art Carnival, Brussels Worlds Fair,
1958. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

These art carnivals became models of a progressive democratic society

internationally; with support from the US government, they were exhibited
at trade fairs in Barcelona, Milan, and at the Brussels Worlds Fair.
DAmico hired artists Charles Alston and Eugene Grigsby, Jr., to represent
MoMA as teachers for the Carnival in the American Pavilion at the
Brussels Worlds Fair, at a time when the Pavilion featured a section on the
inequity inherent in segregation in the US.

Indira Gandhi was so inspired by what she saw in Brussels that she invited

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First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to present MoMAs Childrens Art Carnival

to the National Childrens Museum in India in 1962. In return, Kennedy
received the gift of a baby elephant.

The Childrens Carnival of The Museum of Modern Art, El Festival de los Nios del Museo de Arte
Moderno, in Barcelona, June 16, 1957. Victor DAmico Papers, IV.A.iii.4. The Museum of Modern Art
Archives, New York

In 1969, the Harlem Art Carnival opened, bringing MoMAs methods of art
education to the neighborhood under the leadership of artist and activist
Betty Blanton-Taylor, a MoMA staff member and cofounder of The Studio
Museum in Harlem.

The only space from the DAmico years (193769) that remains is The Art
Barge. In 1960, MoMA transformed a WWI US Navy barge into a two-story
studio space where art classes and teacher training took placeand still
do, under the auspices of the nonprofit Victor DAmico Institute on
beautiful Napeague Bay in Long Island. The Institute continues to offer a
range of summer classes and is a transformative place to visit. I had the

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pleasure of teaching there one summer.

There are untold stories about MoMAs educational past we havent even
begun to explore, from the use of the emerging medium of broadcast
television for greater reach in the 1950s to the Committee on Art
Educations ongoing thought leadership through annual meetings and
exchanges about experimental art education. I am committed to mining
and amplifying the education archives in order to bring even more of this
rich legacy to light prior to the opening of our new gallery spaces in 2019.

Arranging shapes to make a nature-inspired pattern in Art Lab: Nature, The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. Photo: Martin Seck

As we look forward, there are lines of continuity: participatory spaces;

experimentation with new methods for engaging people with art;
embracing technologies for greater reach and leadership; and convening of
conversations about the role of art in society, artist-centered practices, and
a commitment to accessibility and inclusion. These priorities are the

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through lines of MoMAs history as an educational institution, and I expect

this tradition to continue.

Yet as our culture changes and people change, so museums need to change.
There is a greater sense of urgency as technology rapidly increases the
cycle of innovation, and this generation will be required to think like
innovators and artists, to reinvent themselves multiple times over a
lifetime.

As our culture increasingly communicates through visual forms, art

museums can play a leadership role by helping people develop the essential
skills to think critically and analytically about visual imagery.

New technologies will radically change how learning experiences are

structured, making innovation in teaching, its skill and craft, even more
important. And emerging insights from neurosciencesuch as the
importance of emotion in learning; the critical need for continued learning
with an aging population; and the importance of peer-to-peer, co-creative,
and active learningare reshaping the landscape.

Engaging new audiences who think and behave differently is a complex

challenge, but one full of unimagined opportunities. The question we are
asking ourselves is: How can the museum experience be a memorable,
connective, unexpected, imaginative experience worthy of sharing,
recommending, and repeating with others?

My colleagues and I envision a reframing of education as a laboratory of

continued research and experimentation with methods, spaces, and tools.
We must be part of a larger cultural and educational ecosystem, building
networks from varied disciplines and connecting art, people, and the
museum to everyday life. This will ensure that new generations can
become critical, creative citizensand that MoMA will retain a relevant,
vital place in peoples lives, true to our DNA.

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