Every year, about 100 third-graders from Trenton take part in a program at the Princeton University Museum to learn about art.
Guided by the museum docents and their teachers, they explore a vast and stunning world. Studying influences and cultures of the time, they gain perspective on art as reflection as well as refraction.
At the end of the year, they create a mini museum of their own, leading the docents around to view the art they have created. It’s at that point it’s evident that the decades-long program is gloriously different each year.
The lessons and experience of thinking creatively blossom in unexpected ways, a crop of artwork grounded in a year of education but seeded with imagination.
The student exhibit at the Trenton Board of Education building last week featured landscapes, still lifes, self-portraits, stained-glass windows, assemblage-framed embossings, papier-mâché and inspirations from all corners of the world, The Times’ Brielle Urciuoli reported last week.
From the exhibits to the art studio to the classroom, the program stretches across the curriculum by providing historical background behind the pieces the students studied and made. As they wrote about each experience in their journals, the connections became even more vivid.
Research indicates that what students learn in the arts may help them to master other subjects, such as reading, math or social studies. And those children who do take part in arts learning experiences often improve their achievement in other areas of learning and life.
What’s more, these third-graders really enjoyed the experience.
The parents, teachers, guests and volunteer docents whom the students guided around the exhibit were astonished, Urciuoli reported, at the hard work and appreciation the students showed the coordinators of the program.
In terms of opportunity and resources, Princeton University is about a dozen miles and a light year away from the Trenton School District.
A program such as the Frances Lange Public Schools Program helps bridge that distance by introducing children to a wider world in which they can actively participate. They see art evolving from static display to active expression that is open to all.
Are there any future Picassos or Kandinskys among this year’s program graduates? Time will tell.
Seeing what they have accomplished, thanks to this partnership with Trenton schools and the University Museum, the idea doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility.
CONNECT WITH US:
On mobile or desktop:
• Like Times of Trenton on Facebook
• Follow @TimesofTrenton on Twitter