The Public Art Gallery:
Your Community Art Resource
by Kathy Tycholis
The Public Art Gallery: Your Community Art Resource
BCATA - Journal for Art Teachers, Vol 48, #2, 2006
by Kathy Tycholis
School Art Program Coordinator
Richmond Art Gallery
June 2006
The Public Art Gallery
Is a Gallery more than just a space to view art? What if a Gallery could be a place where you come to be a part of the local art community, either as artist or art lover? A Gallery should be a place to discuss and learn about visual art, meet artists, learn about art collecting and conservation, make your own art, participate in collaborative projects, and celebrate special events. Most Public Art Galleries offer opportunities such as these to those who access them. Public Art Galleries are non-profit institutions that show art purely for visitor’s enjoyment and learning, to bring contemporary art into your community. They are a part of the community and attempt to reflect that in the programs they offer and the exhibitions they show. However, as non-profits, they also need community support to grow and flourish, to help develop an artistic and cultural centre. One way Public Galleries foster community relationships is to work with local School Boards and teachers to encourage youth involvement in Gallery programming.
Gallery Education Programs
The Richmond Art Gallery plays a dynamic role in the growth of visual art in Richmond, and is a vital part of the contemporary art network in British Columbia and Canada. The Richmond Art Gallery features exhibitions of regional, national and international contemporary works of art, and has been a primary source of art education and enjoyment in the community for 25 years. Gallery Education programs play an important role in bringing contemporary art expertise to children, youth and adults in an understandable and interesting manner. Currently, the Richmond Art Gallery offers an innovative and diverse program of exhibitions, workshops, lectures, as well as outreach programs that focus on contemporary art and art issues.
As part of my role as School Art Program Coordinator at the Richmond Art Gallery, I not only teach art classes and lead tours, but I work with teachers, parents, and the local School Board to expand our educational programming. Our School Art Program is at the core of our Gallery Education and is an essential component of our mandate: offering opportunities for people of all ages to look at, learn about, and make art to broaden and deepen visual literacy. Educating our youth about contemporary art is extremely important to artists and art galleries to ensure that future generations will value the visual arts and our cultural institutions, while building an informed and engaged citizenry.
As a means of promoting art education and providing programs relevant to the community, the Richmond Art Gallery has developed programs for Grades K –12 by collaborating with Richmond students, teachers, and the school board. We also hope to expand our community beyond Richmond to become an important art institution across the country, which has led to the development of internet-based educational tools for anyone to access.
Online Educational Content – Bringing Contemporary Art Into Your Classroom
With funding provided by the Canadian Heritage, Museum Assistance Program, the Richmond Art Gallery’s online exhibitions Phantasmagoria and In Print were launched in May 2006 as part of a project to commemorate the RAG’s 25th anniversary (1980-2005). These projects advance a practice of engaging the community with contemporary art by taking the Richmond Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection outside of the Gallery and onto the Internet as online exhibitions. The online exhibitions feature artworks from our Permanent Collection and make the content available to educators all over the world.
Approximately one quarter of the Richmond Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection is comprised of prints ranging from lithographs to monoprints, screen prints to etchings. The online exhibition In Print provides a selection of works composed of a variety of print media, illustrating the diversity of modes and themes artists have explored over the past few decades. Educators and their students can view the prints online, along with background information on the artists and the artworks. The “Explore” section of In Print was created to provide an online resource for educators of grades K-12. Educational content was designed to provide visuals, a lesson plan, and resources for teachers to be able to introduce printmaking and contemporary artists into their own classrooms. The project has also been translated into French, reaching out to a broader community across Canada and providing French resources for teachers.
Phantasmagoria, another aspect of our online exhibition programming, is a teen curatorial project facilitated by Carie Helm, the Richmond Art Gallery’s Curatorial Assistant. Carie worked with a group of art students from Cambie Secondary School and their teacher Sandra Kwok-Swan. One of the main objectives with this project was to encourage teens to express their views about issues that are important to them while providing an opportunity to learn about contemporary art and public art gallery procedures. The project created an environment where the group could interact with their peers through the development of an online exhibition geared to other teens. The students involved in the project worked with Carie to gain behind-the-scenes experience learning about curatorial practice, working with permanent collections and understanding why galleries collect. The group viewed a selection of artwork from the Richmond Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection and each student chose a piece for the exhibition. The works were not chosen for media or theme but were selected by each student based on a personal connection to the work. Each student has responded to the work that they have chosen through a creative written passage. The students were creatively involved with this project on many levels from writing their texts to photographing each other for the site and providing input on the design of the exhibition. See both exhibitions on the Richmond Art Gallery’s website at http://www.richmondartgallery.org.
Developing Relationships With the Community
Once Carie had been working with this small group of students for a few weeks, they became curious about Carie’s own art practice. She introduced the students and their teacher to another new program at the Gallery and her own personal passion: Artist Trading Cards. As seen at the recent 2006 BCATA Conference, Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s) are tiny works of art measuring 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" that are made to trade. Cards are traded one for one and all people of all ages and artistic abilities can participate. Carie has a large collection of trading cards, and brought some in to share with the students and hopefully create ‘new converts’ to the practice of Artist Trading Cards in Richmond.
Upon learning about Artist Trading Cards and viewing Carie’s extensive collection of cards, the students became very interested in participating in a trading session. The students began making some cards on their own time, and arrived at our first ever ATC trading session in March 2006 with many cards in hand. Their teacher, Sandra, also became interested in the project and initiated Artist Trading Cards as a classroom project for a few of her art classes. As our trading sessions are still a new program at the Gallery, our monthly trading sessions rely on this small group of enthusiasts to help the Richmond ATC community grow. However, the personal connections made with this group of students and their teacher has also been very important to the Gallery. What began as a small group of students working on a one-time project with the Gallery, grew into a group of students that are now engaged with art gallery programming. As a group of teens that would not normally spend time at an art gallery, they are now a vital part of our local art community.
Expanded Visual Art Experience in the ‘Real World’
When I heard of a recent open-call ATC exhibition happening on Vancouver Island at Parkesville’s Oceanside Art Council Gallery for May 2006, Carie and I immediately informed Sandra Kwok-Swan and her students. We all participated in the exhibition, and Sandra organized a weekend field trip to Parkesville so that her students could not only see their exhibited work, but also be there for the ATC trading session. Sandra and her colleague Alan Bone invited Carie and I along for the weekend trip, to meet up at the trading session. The students enjoyed the experience of visiting Vancouver Island and were quite excited about having their very first Gallery exhibition. Through an artist friend from the Oceanside Art Council Gallery, we were also able to take the students on a tour of George Sawchuk’s hidden outsider-art sculpture garden in the Comox Valley. The hour-long self-guided tour ended with a surprise appearance by George Sawchuk inviting us all into his private studio for a tour and chat about his work. This was a wonderful learning experience for the students to meet a senior artist, hear about his creative process, and see how he lives.
After the tour, we all headed to the Artist Trading Card session in Parkesville where we were met by a very enthusiastic ATC community. Many of the local artists were happy to have participants come all the way from the Lower Mainland for their trading session and were extremely welcoming to all of us. The students were thrilled to see their artworks exhibited in the Gallery and this enthusiasm, along with their Artist Trading Cards, were a big hit at the trading session. Being at this exhibition also provided another great experience for the young artists: the pride of seeing your work professionally hung alongside other artists’ works (no matter how small the artworks may be). Meeting with artists at the Gallery also provided the opportunity to exchange emails and ATC announcements to become a part of a larger ATC trading community throughout British Columbia. In the end, it was a wonderful day of viewing, discussing, and sharing art that was a memorable trip for all of us!
Expanding our Arts Community (An Update)
Building on the success of our Artist Trading Card sessions held monthly at the Richmond Art Gallery, we had an open-call ATC exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery in September 2006. Most of the Cambie Secondary students participated, as their interest in exhibiting artworks has now been inspired and seen as an attainable goal. I hope they see the Gallery as their local art space, a place they feel welcome and are a part of.
Staff at the Richmond Art Gallery are always looking to have more experiences like the one outlined above. For this to happen, student and teacher input into our programming is essential. Having more schools and community members viewing the Gallery as an art resource within the community will develop into new ways to collaborate and experience visual art. However, without more community involvement, a non-profit organization will simply cease to exist.
Our job at the Gallery is to have the community engage with contemporary art practices through hands-on learning, direct experience and discussion. As a smaller institution, our staff strives to be accessible to gallery visitors and participants in all of our programs. We can offer professional advice on art projects or events, provide Professional Development opportunities, or work collaboratively to develop a program that you think your community or classroom needs. Working with the students from Cambie Secondary highlighted for us at the Gallery that we never know exactly how our programs will develop and evolve. Public galleries are here for you to access, please make sure you use them to your full advantage as you may be surprised what will develop!
End Notes:
Artist Trading Card trading sessions at the Richmond Art Gallery happen the 4th Wednesday of each month from 7-8:30pm. (7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond, BC) Contact Carie Helm at 604-247-8317 or chelm@richmond.ca for more information.
For more information on the Richmond Art Gallery’s educational programs, please view our website or contact Kathy at 604-247-8316 or ktycholis@richmond.ca
References:
Richmond Art Gallery Association (2006). The Richmond Art Gallery [online]. Available: http://www.richmondartgallery.org. (June 20, 2006.