Twenty-four Worcester State University students attended a lecture by Assistant Curator Nancy Burns at the Worcester Art Museum on Tuesday, October 9. The students were drawn from the Community Leadership Experience at Worcester State (CLEWS) as well as Adjunct Professor Domingo Guyton’s Hip Hop and Civil Rights seminar. The end result is that WSU student writing now graces the WAM website [1].
“This is a terrific pilot,” Dr. Mark Wagner said. “Students not only get out of the classroom and into the community, they also see their work and their peers work publicized by one of Worcester’s great institution.”
Director of the Education at the Art Museum, Marcia Lagerway, also sees this as a program that could happen each year going forward. In particular, she would like to see students writing about and creating a living catalog around the Old Master’s gallery show next fall. That show will feature permanent pieces from the WAM collection, and Lagerway is imagining a digital catalog of reflections and comments by folks who access the museum.
For this year’s pilot, Burns’ lecture presented information on how to read the photographs in a current show, “Kennedy to Kent State,” a grouping of iconic photographs from the 1960s, which will be in the WAM galleries through February 2013. The evening also featured a discussion with Guyton, Professor of Visual and Performing Arts Michael Hachey, M.F.A., Director of Residence Life Adrian Gage, Director of the Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement Mark Wagner, Ph.D., and Professor of Philosophy and Presidential Fellow for Arts, Education, and Community Kristin Waters, Ph.D., about how different media carry messages. In the end, museum staff and Wagner and Gage selected student work that reflected on the art and showed strength with respect to academic work.