Art Through the South Bronx

In the mid 1920’s, Helen Gardner published “Art Through the Ages: an introduction to its history and significance.” She wanted to provide people with a text which would introduce people to art and the important place it has in culture and society.

Kasha, a senior at Bethany College in West Virginia, had the same vision for her students in the Bronx. She was one of the teachers for Rosedale’s Summer Intermediate Program, a program designed for seventh and eighth graders who have maintained above-average grades. The students spend five weeks in cultural and sports activities, such as Musical Theatre (courtesy of Concordia College) and tennis lessons (provided free-of-charge by the New York Junior Tennis League).

Kasha, in collaboration with the staff at Rosedale, created an art history course designed to introduce the “SIPS” (as the Summer Intermediate Program is called) to four broad categories within art history: Medieval, Renaissance, Impressionism, and Modern. The girls had an art history lecture at the beginning of the week. Afterwards, they visited one of the major museums in New York in order to see and analyze artwork from that particular period.

Their introduction to Medieval art took place at the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art located in Upper Manhattan. At first, students were less than enthused. “A museum?!? Oh, no!” said one horrified participant. However, after much encouragement from their teacher, the group set off in the Rosedale van for the Cloisters.

Once there, the students began to get interested in spite of themselves. Natalie, a seventh grader, noticed the static expressions on the Madonnas, an important characteristic of the period. Others learned to distinguish between Gothic and Romanesque architecture: the former being distinguished by “those pointy arches!” They spoke about the flat quality of the paintings and the lack of realistic perspective.
 

The trip to the Cloisters was followed by a visit to the Frick Museum and two visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the end of the course, the students engaged in a “free drawing” activity, where they drew pictures in response to different types of music, ranging from classical to bluegrass to hip-hop. The students found some similarities between their drawings and examples of artwork that they studied during the course: for example, their drawings in response to Mozart were flowers and plants, similar to the pastoral landscapes popular at the time. It became clear to them that art is a product of human nature – a universal language – that they could relate to.

by M. V. Ticzon

published August 2003

A Place to Blossom    rosedale@sbef.org