It’s the best time of the year for the AVPA Art’s five high school interns at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: touring season. Emily Wood, Edna Vogel, Marilyn Liu, Michelle Bac and Azalie Welsh have all been working on designing their own interactive tours for the past few months, focusing on an special exhibition of surrealist art created by women artists from Mexico and the United States.
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Emily Wood, left, is an AVPA student and LACMA intern
Now that April is upon us, we are leading groups of high school and middle school students from all over L.A. on the tours we each researched and designed, enthusiastically introducing our peers to In Wonderland!
This past Friday, we had the good fortune (contrary to what custom would predict for Friday the 13th) of being able to tour forty art and music students the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts program from Culver City High School. Each tour group, led by one of the high school interns, participated in guided discussions of several artworks in the exhibition.
Students were encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings about each piece, becoming comfortable with the idea of voicing their personal interpretations of the artwork. Each group had a unique touring experience, according to the theme its LACMA intern chose to focus on within the exhibition.
At the end of the interactive tour, students had the chance to take part in a fun art-making game often played by surrealist artists—the exquisite corpse.
We worked together to draw funky, discombobulated monsters and further reflect on the themes in the exhibition. Then, all students received free tickets to the special exhibition, In Wonderland, including the entire museum in a self-guided exploration of LACMA’s encyclopedic collection.
As a second-year LACMA intern, I found that touring students from CCHS, both those who had never been to LACMA before and those who had, was an incredible experience. Students who participated in the tour also enjoyed learning about Surrealism and the women artists who created the work.
Senior Suranga deSilva reflected on In Wonderland: “I thought it was pretty interesting to see how all these artists were trying to distance themselves from other people’s image of them and influence on them so they could fully be the people they saw themselves. I know this fieldtrip was equally thought-provoking for everyone who was part of it.” A special thank you to Patti Jaffe, Karlo Silbiger, Janice Pober, Dylan Farris, Kim Indelicato, Eunice Vines, Karol Mora, Kristen Johannesen, and Dr. Tony Spano for attending our tour.
Ms. Hatanaka, co-chair of the AVPA, may be contacted at kristinehatanaka@ccusd.org
See avpa.org
