I have included two pieces of messages addressing the connection with
visitors and their interest in art.  The former message addresses some
basic management/enlightenment issues of the board/employers/employees
and creative perception, while the latter draws on putting emphasis on
influencing/teaching children as a future consumer.
 
Go to any public school and the emphasis on art and the ways of art
instruction are anything but enlightening.  Like most skills and tools,
one needs to be encouraged and taught how to make the best use and to
relate those skills and tools to other tasks.  I tend to think this act
of creative thinking is what sows the fields of possibilities with the
ideas that will take root into realities.  This country like so many
others places such a low priority on creativity there is little
encouragement to develop those skills past a certain age; and many times
those skills are demeaned and discouraged.  It would seem we teach our
children to be passive, complacent voyuers and cogs for an employment
machine that does not allow anything but compliance.  In this atmosphere
of childhood training, should we expect any "enlightened" consumers?
 
I guess I am attacking a percieved sterility and passivity in our
enculturating institutions.  Television and video games certainly don't
encourage too much creativity except perhaps in solving a programmer's
logic.  Now some of the educational programs on PBS do strive to spark
some ideas in children, but many are teaching the same compliance and
role models we already have.  Children have what I call "steel-trap"
minds in that they see without the preconceptions and agendas of their
teachers and usually understand things in their own terms.  I have often
heard a teacher correcting a child's view by implanting the teacher's
image over the child's creativity, but I have also seen teacher's truly
attempt to understand or suggest other models to that child; but that is
the rarity.
 
If we take a couple of steps back from ourselves and our children, we can
see the dymanics of perpetuation that we have had inflicted on us and how
we are passing that inheritance onto, and into, our children.  In the
role of parent, we set the stage for our children's behaviour, worldview
and relation to themselves, others and their community; and their role
of selfless service to others and their communities.  We know how we have
solved the problem for ourselves, and how others have solved the problem,
but isn't there some other way?
 
I tend to embrace the philosophy that museums that want to be interactive
with their communities, can find new ways of teaching.  Museums and
libraries are two closely related institutions that can have a new impact
on their communities by being free (relatively) of the constraints of
other public educational institutions.  We have resources that we often
overlook or discount: people within our community: elders, other
children, people from other cultures. I think we can solve these problems
by being leaders and not imitators.
 
Dave Wells
 
 
> On Feb 2,  2:28pm, R. Murphy wrote:
>
> > From what Ralph Appelbaum says the use of interactive displays
> > to entice children has more to do with how trustees and directors see
> > children in the museum environment (make it a game, keep them busy)
> > than how children learn to look at/with art. Children already see
> > with art, it's the adults that need the education. American business
> > complains that employees lack the ability to think creativly in order
> > to solve problems. Art shows you how to look from multiple points of
> > view, to manipulate material, to think creatively. As Nam Jun Paik
> > has said, "We don't need digital art, we need art for a digital age."
> > So, perhaps what we need is not interactive exhibits, but exhibits for
> > an interactive environment.
 
On Fri, 3 Feb 1995, Joshua Heuman wrote:
>
> I can understand trying to attract more adults, but how successful is such a
> venture?  Is it even possible?
> Take Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario.  I don't know their numbers for the
> average day when nothing special is occuring.  When the Barnes exhibit was
> here though they were swamped.  Nearly 600,000 people came for the Barnes.
> With each Barnes ticket ($15 Cdn. for an adult) one was entitled to see the
> rest of the museum, as well.  It would certainly be interesting to know how
> many took advantage of this opportunity.
> I suppose my point is that adults are more suseptible to media-hype.
> Children, if they are shown at an early age what to appreciate in an art
> museum, will be more likely to go for the hype (special exhibitions), but
> also the regular collections.  And, not to be morbid, but the people who are
> now adults will most likely be dead by the time museums can put together
> full-functioning interactive, multi-sensory displays to aid in the learning
> process.  I know its corny, but children are the future.  To be successful,
> the priority must be children.
>
>
> --
> Joshua Heuman
> [log in to unmask]
> Art History Undergraduate
>