Public Art Inspires Youth

Today I spent a few hours touring around The Phillips Collection. It was quite an amazing experience from start to finish. Who knew that so many great works of art were stashed away in a mansion a mere two blocks from DuPont? I certainly did not.

However; my favorite part of visiting The Phillips Collection wasn't the Monets, Rothkos, or O'Keefe's. Rather, I most enjoyed a possibly overlooked exhibition hosted in the second basement, entitled Over the River and Through the School: A Young Artists Exhibition inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

First, some background: Christo and Jean-Claude are famous for their public art exhibitions. The duo creates these masterful, often colorful exhibitions in major public places simply for the public's enjoyment. Rather than charging a fee to "taste and see" their exhibits, they make money off of lithographs and other small items sold separately. Thus far, they've featured in places such as Paris, New York City, and the Biscayne Bay, to name a few. When I first discovered their work I was struck by the grandeur of it. Christo and Jeanne-Claude make no apologies or excuses for the massive scale of their projects, which literally overtake particular landscapes for a time. These projects attract viewers like some kind of outdoor museums, drawing huge crowds and encouraging people to find awe in everyday spaces.

Now, as for the particular exhibition described above. It was basically a school project, or actually several schools' projects inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude's recent exhibit at the Phillips Collection. (I'm lifting this straight from The Phillips Collection pamphlet):

Visiting the Phillips Collection's exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Over the River, A Work in Progress was an important component of the school projects. Students participated in a special school progam designed for the exhibition, that allowed them to explore how Christo and Jeanne-Claude's art can change the way we see and experience spaces.

The hands-on activity in the museum's workshop encouraged students to step into Christo and Jeanne-Claude's artistic process and experiment with Christo's multifaceted collage and drawing technique...

...By incorporating and experimenting with a variety of materials, this process allowed students to consider the different possibilities for environmental installations at their respective schools.

The students then took their drawings and models and created real live exhibitions at their schools, some with large art pieces displayed in their school's corridors, others with large-scale colorful projects, such as streaming ribbons of fabric or huge billowing banners, covering their school buildings' facades. These children's artwork became the pride and joy of their schools, giving them a personal stake in their school's well-being. Kids who might otherwise have disengaged from the learning process likely now felt as much a part of it as their teachers. As one student, from Kenmore Middle School, is quoted in the pamphlet: 'One of the most amazing things about this project is being able to look at this installation and say, "Wow, I was a part of that..." ' Now I don't know about you, but I think that's a powerful statement!

This basement collection of photos, videos, and pieces of the kids' work evidences more than the guilded frames and swirly lines worth millions of dollars and monitored with cameras and fancy machines upstairs. The Young Artists Exhibition showed why art matters as more than just an accessory or decoration in life. Certainly pieces of art can move the viewer, as did numerous pieces during my visit, but this particular exhibition enabled me to move past that experience to something even deeper: the power of art to inspire and uplift communities by being a catalyst for creativity. Public art encourages people to take a real interest in their communities and start seeing themselves as people with the ability to uplift and empower the very world that they live in, both visually, and otherwise. Today, I had a chance to witness that process first hand, through the works of inspired youth. And in a city with some of the worst test scores in the country, such uplifting opportunities should serve as little beacons of hope for the future.