Greaves instructs the children to stand in a circle, holding hands, as she leads them in a walking rotation. \u201cLook at how it changes as we walk around,\u201d she says. The shapes are flat, but the mobile itself is \u201cthree-dimensional,\u201d Greaves notes. \u201cIt has length, it has height, it has depth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next the children learn that a famous artist once built mobiles\u2014invented them, in fact\u2014with all of these concepts\u2014color, shape, dimension, and movement\u2014in mind. His name was Alexander Calder (1898\u20131976), and one of his mobiles, Polychrome Horizontals<\/em>, is right here in Rochester, in the collections of the Memorial Art Gallery. She shares an image of Calder\u2019s mobile on a smart screen, and the children notice the features it shares with the mobile they created.<\/p>\n Greaves shows the class another work from the MAG collection, this one a painting called Galaxy<\/em><\/a>, by Fritz Trautmann (1882\u20131971), a Wisconsin-born artist who lived and worked in Rochester, both as a landscape artist and as a teacher in MAG\u2019s Creative Workshop. Galaxy<\/em> is composed entirely of circles, each an exploration of color and shadow. The result is a two-dimensional image that looks strikingly three-dimensional, a gathering of floating spheres that seem to recede into the distance.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you see?\u201d Greaves asks.<\/p>\n \u201cEyes,\u201d one girl says, pointing to a large white sphere partially eclipsed by a small orange circle.<\/p>\n \u201cBouncy balls,\u201d says a boy.<\/p>\n Greaves points out that the painting is \u201ctwo-dimensional,\u201d and yet, \u201cit looks like we could dive in and swim around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI might see a shark in there,\u201d a girl says.<\/p>\n Another girl gazes at the spheres.<\/p>\n \u201cCan we make them?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n Greaves and Nicpon began collaborating early in 2022 to map out a series of lessons in which Greaves would connect the subjects and skills Nicpon was already teaching to the study and practice of art. Over the course of nine visits to Nicpon\u2019s classroom last spring, Greaves connected topics in math, science, social studies, reading and communication, as well as social and emotional learning\u2014all outlined in the New York State Department of Education kindergarten learning standards<\/a>\u2014to exercises that involved close observation and discussion of artworks, as well as some art making. In June, the class visited the MAG, where Greaves greeted them and led them on a tour during which they saw for the first time several of the works they had studied.<\/p>\n The collaboration was an ambitious example of what\u2019s called arts integration.<\/p>\n Both a pedagogical method and a philosophy of education, arts integration encompasses traditional arts education and arts enrichment. But at its best, it\u2019s something distinct from either of these practices.<\/p>\n Becca Rosen, a PhD candidate in teaching and curriculum at the University\u2019s Warner School of Education<\/a>, teaches a course at Warner on the theory and practice of arts integration in K\u20138 classrooms. \u201cThe goal of arts integration,\u201d she says, \u201cis both to increase students\u2019 knowledge of a subject area, while concurrently fostering their understanding and appreciation of a particular art form.\u201d Rosen describes the relationship between academic and artistic learning as mutually reinforcing: \u201cThe subject matter enhances student\u2019s understanding of an art form, and then the art enhances a student\u2019s understanding of the subject matter.\u201d<\/p>\n School art teachers can play important roles in arts integration. Nicpon\u2019s students have art instruction every fourth day for half of the school year, and their teacher, Megan Simmons, has integrated some of her lessons with Nicpon\u2019s. For example, as the children studied picture book author Eric Carle with Nicpon, they learned how Carle made images from painted tissue paper and tried their hand at it in class with Simmons. By reinforcing one another\u2019s lessons, Nicpon and Simmons showed their students how words and pictures work together in storytelling and in self-expression.<\/p>\n But the most ambitious arts integration programs usually also involve community partners. Before embarking on her PhD at Rochester, Rosen held multiple museum roles, including helping with curriculum and professional development for classroom teachers and teaching artists as education coordinator of the Learning Through Art program at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.<\/p>\n The Memorial Art Gallery has a similar arts integration program. For the past several years, MAG and a group of Rochester City School District elementary schools have been partners in the Expanded Learning Collaboration, or ELC.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ELC program began\u00a0in the fall of 2013 with a single school, Francis Parker School No. 23, serving students in grades 1 through 6. It was designed to serve the school district\u2019s emphasis on project-based instruction, a pedagogical practice based on the premise that motivation and retention can be enhanced when students undertake real-world, hands-on projects that have personal meaning to them. Grade by grade, students visited the museum four weeks in a row to participate in activities related to the classroom curricula that simultaneously enhanced students\u2019 visual literacy and offered a new context for critical thinking. Led by a MAG docent, they engaged in thoughtful conversations about works of art. Then they entered the museum\u2019s Creative Workshop space, where teaching artists encouraged them in their creation of art projects complementing what they had learned both in the museum and the classroom.<\/p>\n Funded by an extensive list of foundations and individual MAG donors, as well as some state and county monies, the\u00a0ELC<\/a> soon expanded to two additional schools. After the COVID-19 pandemic forced a hiatus, the program relaunched in 2021\u201322 to serve five schools, including School No. 19.<\/p>\n The work in Nicpon\u2019s classroom this past spring was not strictly part of the ELC. While the grade levels of the students have varied by year and by school, the program has never served students before they\u2019ve reached the first grade. Instead, the work in Nicpon\u2019s classroom was the type of innovation MAG leaders hope the program will continue to inspire, as they seek to expand the program\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n In spring 2020, the program\u2019s key architect, Marlene Hamann-Whitmore, retired from MAG following a career of more than 25 years. After an international search for her replacement, MAG welcomed a new McPherson Director of Academic Programs, Nile Blunt, with the specific charge of building on the museum\u2019s community outreach, including the ELC program.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of museums, and I\u2019ve never experienced a museum that has as robust a desire to engage the surrounding community as MAG does,\u201d says Blunt, who also has an appointment in the Department of Art and Art History<\/a>, where he teaches a course on museum studies.<\/p>\n That desire stems from the founding mission of MAG. Established in 1913 by Emily Sibley Watson, a devoted art collector and philanthropist who was a daughter of Western Union founder Hiram Sibley, the museum was to be part of the University of Rochester with permanent collections, exhibitions, and a library \u201cheld in trust for the citizens of Rochester,\u201d for whom they would be \u201ca means both of pleasure and of education,\u201d according to a Democrat and Chronicle<\/em> write-up announcing the museum\u2019s opening.<\/p>\n The museum Blunt most recently served has similar, albeit much more recent, origins. He was the head of school programs at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. That museum was founded in 2011 by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, to make art accessible to the area\u2019s largely rural community. Much like Rochester today, Bentonville is not a major metropolitan center, and the population in the surrounding region includes a high proportion of people living in poverty.<\/p>\n As head of school programs there, Blunt oversaw a school visits program that welcomes roughly 45,000 K\u201312 students each year; two arts integration programs with more than 30 partner schools; online and distance learning; and when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, a 50-video series on close looking and art interpretation.<\/p>\n In November 2020, Jonathan Binstock, the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of MAG, Blunt, and Robert Snyder, then principal of School No. 45, went on the popular local radio show, WXXI\u2019s 1370 Connections<\/em><\/a> with Evan Dawson, to talk about the present and future of ELC. On the show, Binstock called the Crystal Bridges museum education program \u201carguably the most innovative and pioneering educational program at an art museum in the country.\u201d Recruiting Blunt, he suggested, was a coup for MAG, the University, and the Greater Rochester community.<\/p>\n Blunt, who was initially trained for a career in teaching and research, welcomed the chance to serve at a university-affiliated museum. At the University of Illinois at Urbana\u00ad\u2013Champaign, where he earned a PhD in history in 2011\u2014or, as he often calls it, \u201can art history PhD masquerading as a history PhD\u201d\u2014he gravitated to the study of visual and material culture, completing his dissertation on ceremonial dining and religious ritual in 17th-century England.<\/p>\n MAG proved ideal because, Blunt says, \u201cthe nature of the relationship between the museum and the University is really unique amongst university art galleries, in terms of our focus on the city and community.\u201d University art museums are rarely located off campus; and while that was not Watson\u2019s intention (the museum sits on what was once the University\u2019s Prince Street campus), its location has made it more visible and accessible beyond the University community.<\/p>\n Blunt speaks with passion and conviction about the effect even one visit to an art museum can have on someone who has never had the experience before.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen it transform people\u2019s lives,\u201d he says. \u201cIt sounds cliche, but it\u2019s true. It can change someone\u2019s entire worldview\u2014especially a young person\u2019s, but really anybody who hasn\u2019t thought about the arts before, or entered a museum before. The way they start approaching art can be very different based on one visit, or one experience.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s in part because art museums are naturally suited to draw people into a dialogue. MAG\u2019s professional museum educators and volunteer docents are trained to facilitate conversations with students and other groups of visitors \u201cthat allow them to ask and answer questions, to present their own interpretation of the work of art, their own understanding of what this means,\u201d Blunt says. \u201cAnd with younger students, that kind of thinking is empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n For students such as Nicpon\u2019s and most of the students participating in the ELC program, the conversation can be as simple as the feelings they experience looking at a landscape painting. One child may see a sky that\u2019s blue and decide she feels sad; another may point to the sun off in the corner and say the picture makes him happy. The students in this example disagree. But, says Blunt, \u201cthey both offer evidence and reasoning as to why they think as they do. And that helps create civil discourse. It helps them understand that they can both be right, even though they disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n Encounters like this one prepare the way for more complex conversations about art as students reach adolescence and adulthood. They also help ensure the museum can continue to attract audiences necessary to fulfill its mission to serve for the pleasure and education of the Greater Rochester community.<\/p>\n The types of art a museum owns and exhibits, of course, plays a role in fulfilling that promise.<\/p>\n Since arriving at MAG in 2012, Binstock has moved to diversify the museum\u2019s permanent collections<\/a> and exhibitions, with a particular focus on living artists who address themes that resonate in contemporary American culture and society.<\/p>\n MAG\u2019s most recent exhibitions have included National Anthem<\/em><\/a> (2018) a multimedia exploration by Kota Ezawa (b. 1969) created in response to NFL athletes \u201ctaking a knee\u201d to protest police brutality against people of color; Market of the Senses<\/em><\/a>, an exhibition of video art by Tony Cokes (b. 1956) that recontextualizes familiar representations from the popular news media, inviting conversations about language, interpretation, and how we create meaning; stained-glass art<\/a> by Judith Schaechter (b. 1961), who has been praised as a feminist \u201cpost-punk stained-glass sorceress\u201d; Unfinished Business<\/em>, an expansive, four-panel painting in black and white by Rochester artist and activist Shawn Dunwoody, created in the aftermath of the death of Daniel Prude at the hands of Rochester police officers; and Up Against the Wall<\/em><\/a>, an exhibit of HIV\/AIDS posters from around the globe, drawn from the largest collection of such posters in the world, that of the late Rochester physician Edward C. Atwater, held by the University\u2019s Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the radio program, Blunt shared his goal to expand the ELC program, not just in terms of the number of students who get to participate, but also in ways that keep with the program\u2019s defining aspect of engaging in ways that are \u201cdeep, meaningful, and robust.\u201d He drew attention to the diversity of MAG\u2019s collections, an aspect of the museum he feared many people in the Greater Rochester community might not recognize.<\/p>\n Closing out his spot on the radio program, Blunt embraced the goal, long instilled at MAG, to establish a relationship with a wider community in which people \u201cfeel that the University of Rochester, in all of the ways it manifests itself across this region, is really here for everybody.\u201d And one way he planned to do that was to go out in the community and ask, \u201chow best can the MAG serve you?\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after the program aired, Blunt received a telephone call from School No. 19 principal Moniek Silas-Lee.<\/p>\n Silas-Lee was looking to expand arts programming at the school, where she and her colleagues were facing a challenge. More than 90 percent of School No. 19\u2019s 344 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade live in poverty. Just over a quarter have documented disabilities. In 2019, based on data from several years up to and including the 2017\u201318 academic year, the school entered receivership, a category designated by the New York State Department of Education for schools \u201cpersistently struggling\u201d to meet state requirements for learning proficiency.<\/p>\n That Silas-Lee would seek to enhance arts education under these circumstances marks her as a bold leader.<\/p>\n Several studies<\/a> have pointed to a correlation between the rise in accountability, as measured through standardized testing, and a decline in K\u201312 arts education. While there\u2019s much evidence that arts education helps students hone many valuable skills\u2014a causal<\/em> connection between arts education and measurable success in other areas has been harder to establish. Moreover, the broad benefits of arts education can take time to manifest. Given those circumstances, educators facing numeric targets and a tight timeline have strong incentives to focus on drilling down in academic subjects, sometimes at the expense of arts education.<\/p>\n But Silas-Lee, who arrived at School No. 19 in 2017, says they tried \u201chunkering down,\u201d taking safe approaches to teaching, and strengthening professional development as needed. That approach, she says starkly, \u201cwasn\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n She and many of her colleagues couldn\u2019t help but notice how much students and parents alike appreciated and valued the Strings for Success<\/a> program, a collaboration between the school and the local nonprofit Center for Youth that has spanned 14 years. The program works with volunteer instructors and donated instruments to offer weekly violin lessons to any School No. 19 student in grades 2 through 8 with an interest\u2014that was 130 students during the 2019\u201320 school year. The students hear from guest artists, play together in ensembles, and take field trips and perform in destinations as near as Eastman Theatre and as far away as Washington, DC, and New York City.<\/p>\n Wednesdays\u2014the day of the Strings for Success lessons\u2014have long been distinguished by the highest attendance rates, Silas-Lee notes. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to move to remote learning, the Strings for Success program continued online, with high levels of attendance and engagement. That spring, eight of the school\u2019s students were accepted into the music program at School of the Arts (SOTA), a Rochester City School for grades 7 to 12 that requires a formal audition.<\/p>\n In the fall of 2020, she brought together her administrative team to brainstorm about other, similar ways to bring arts into the life of the school. Establishing partnerships with arts organizations seemed a natural route to try\u2014and that\u2019s when one of her teachers, Carla Carey, heard Binstock, Snyder, and Blunt on the radio. \u201cShe said, \u2018Moniek, we should really reach out to [Blunt]. He sounds like he\u2019s really in line with what we\u2019re thinking,\u201d Silas-Lee recalls.<\/p>\n Silas-Lee met with Blunt and made a pitch for a partnership with School No. 19. \u201cHe loved it,\u201d she says, \u201cand we started from there.\u201d<\/p>\n By the end of the 2020\u201321 school year, Silas-Lee and her team had established partnerships with MAG as well as two other organizations, the Hochstein School of Music and the Rochester Broadway Theatre League. Including the Strings for Success partnership with Center for Youth, the school had established four connections, the pillars of the \u201cArts 4 All\u201d initiative Silas-Lee would introduce in fall 2021.<\/p>\n That spring, to prepare her staff, Silas-Lee arranged for them to take a trip to each of the partnership organizations. Nicpon\u2014who had never been exposed to art museums as a child\u2014was captivated by MAG.<\/p>\n Silas-Lee calls Nicpon \u201ca go-getter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf she sees the benefit something has for our students, she is the first one on board,\u201d Silas-Lee says.<\/p>\n Nicpon was not dissuaded by the fact that her students were younger than any served thus far by the ELC program. And like Silas-Lee, she does not view the pursuit of arts integration as a risk. She concedes that teachers often worry that enhanced art education will mean they may not get through their curricula. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t worry so much,\u201d she says. \u201cMy science and my social studies, I did through the arts. That time that Sydney was here was extremely valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n Greaves helped cover not only colors, shapes, dimensions, and movement, but also the five senses, the states of matter, animals and habitats, and multiple topics in communication and social and emotional learning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t get to the cityscape,\u201d Nicpon says with an air of disappointment. \u201cIt just got so busy.\u201d<\/p>\n Bringing art in has made the lessons \u201cjoyful,\u201d Nicpon says. And the reactions of the kids\u2014all just emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, and all experiencing their first classroom setting just this year\u2014is one of \u201ctotal engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n In June, the class finished off its year with a visit to MAG. There they greeted Greaves\u2014\u201cMs. Syndey,\u201d as they call her\u2014and saw several of the works they studied, there in real life, for the first time.<\/p>\n Greaves is always struck by the reaction of the young students in the ELC program when they visit the museum. \u201cThey have prior knowledge that they didn\u2019t have before and then they see the artworks in real life as opposed to a screen, and it\u2019s really empowering. They just own those artworks.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicpon snapped pictures at the visit as though she were documenting a family outing. \u201cThey were pointing\u2014\u2018we know that picture!\u2019,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd my little ones who like goofing around\u2014they were just in awe.\u201d<\/p>\n As with all school-related visits to MAG, each child left with a free visit pass for themselves and a family member.<\/p>\n Silas-Lee says the collaboration between MAG and Nicpon this year stretched the possibilities of arts integration, offering a template for the education she\u2019s working to provide all the students at School No. 19: \u201cThe students have art in their lives from the very first time they start to learn to read or write. All they\u2019re going to ever know is that art is a part of school. And school is a part of art.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Blunt says he and his team continue to build educational partnerships across the city and region, inspired by the model of arts integration and the success of ELC. For example, students and instructors in\u00a0Encompass: Resources for Learning<\/a>, a program of the Education Success Foundation, are taking a deep dive into the visual arts through a series of teacher professional development workshops and field trips to the museum.<\/p>\n In addition, an important and symbolic development on MAG\u2019s grounds is well underway. For nearly 30 years, MAG\u2019s neighbor to the west has been SOTA. A few years ago, the acclaimed artist Rashid Johnson<\/a> traveled from his home in New York City to MAG to explore ideas for a new work. Outside he was struck by the mostly Black and Brown students mingling outside the school\u2019s entrance on Prince Street. Yet there was nothing on the west side of the museum comparable to the east side\u2019s Centennial Sculpture Park<\/a> to entice these potential visitors.<\/p>\n![\"Mobile](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/arts-integration-colors-shapes-2.jpg\")
![\"Alexander](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fea-arts-integration-calder-gettyimages.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhat is arts integration?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/arts-integration-painting.jpg\")
![\"Greaves](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/arts-integration-museum-tour.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
Arts integration through the Expanded Learning Collaboration\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Nile](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/arts-integration-Nile-Blunt.jpg\")
What can the Memorial Art Gallery do for you? <\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Nicpon](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/arts-integration-school-teachers-leaders.jpg\")
Broadening the reach of arts integration\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n