Liza Torrence and Rhea Creado always enjoy the time they get to spend at Children’s Museum of Manhattan — whether they are interacting with children and their families as they explore the different art materials, artist installations, and creative spaces in the museum – or facilitating workshops and introducing new materials and tools inspired by the artists in residence at the museum. Their teaching and interactions at the museum complement the ideas they are learning in the MA in Art+Education programs as future classroom teachers and community artist activists. From thinking about student-centered classroom design, to critical multiculturalism and backwards design, time spent teaching and learning in the museum becomes a laboratory for ideas they will bring to the work they will do after they graduate.
Alumni
Emma Niwa’s Portrait Project
NYU Art+Ed alumna and elementary art teacher Emma Niwa makes so much art! At her school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, her 5th grade students explore many media and materials but a staple project each year that everyone looks forward to are the self portrait and printmaking studies. In addition to creating a visual portrait of themselves that reflects their emotions and interests, students create a print to serve as their background to share other aspects of their lives and personality traits they want to highlight. Emma takes students to local museum exhibitions to see portraits by contemporary artists and always asks students to write about their experiences making the work and the choices they made along the way.
Student artwork from Emma Niwa’s class:
NYU Art+Education at NAEA
NAEA 2017 – Boston
NYU Art+Education alumni and faculty presented several formal and informal sessions at the 2017 NAEA conference. Jungwon Park, Ariana Mygatt and Jessica Hamlin presented the panel: Art as Research: Investigating Education as Artist Educators. This session highlighted the work of pre-service teachers in the NYU Art+Education program, and shared examples of research-driven inquiry and artwork produced while working in urban public schools and community-based contexts.
Program alumni John Kaiser staged a protest sign making and borrowing station at the convention.
Professors Joe Fusaro and Jessica Hamlin presented a session: Contemporary Strategies for Creative and Critical Teaching in the 21st Century based on an article published by Art Education magazine of the same name. This session paired classroom case studies and the work of contemporary artists who model critical and creative capacities and process-driven strategies across diverse subject areas and grade levels.
And finally, NYU Art+Ed alumni and faculty helped to organize a participatory art performance by Oliver Herring along with students from several high schools in New York City. Areas for Action (AFA) is an open ended participatory performance, improvisatory sculpture, and real-time collaborative artwork. Conference participants were invited to interact with one another and the environment in the spirit of creative invention, interpretation, and play. A follow-up discussion with Oliver Herring, educators and students from a variety of contexts explored the possibilities for connecting AFA to classroom teaching and learning.
NAEA 2019 – Boston
In 2018, Program Director Dipti Desai received the Studies in Art Education Lecture Award for scholarly contribution to art education and gave a talk.
NYU Art+Education alumna, Tiffany Lenoi Jones and faculty, Jessica Hamlin presented the session, ‘Connecting the practices of socially engaged artists to student led social transformation‘ which shared examples of educator practice at high school and graduate levels that facilitate student-led artistic inquiry and social activism that were inspired by contemporary socially engaged artists.
In addition, NYU Art+Ed faculty participated in a two-part presentation. Part 1 of the presentation discussed how contemporary art and artists offer rich connections to students’ lives and explored different approaches to contemporary teaching practices. Part 2 of the session included a wide range of teachers who offered “flash” descriptions of classroom and individual teaching strategies using contemporary art and artists to engage students.
Art+Ed Mixer and TASK Event
Art+Ed Mixer & TASK Event – Fall 2016
Nick Kozak: Taken for Grant-ed
Nick Kozak is an Artist Educator working at Manhattan Hunter Science High School. He attended the State University of New York at New Paltz, where he studied Art History and Art Education. Later, he completed a Masters in Art + Education at New York University, where he is currently part of the adjunct faculty. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, cat, and growing collection of comic books. More than often he makes food for people. Nick also makes art.
ART HISTORY – Grant Project
As part of the Art History class Kozak teaches at Manhattan Hunter Science, focused on contemporary art exhibitions and time-specific work, this year, students worked with the National Parks Service (NPS), specifically looking at the General Grant National Memorial (aka, Grant’s Tomb) located at on Riverside Drive at 122nd street.
The culminating project for this exploration of a facet of US History took the form of making corrective and comedic videos celebrating our 18th president and the post-Civil War era. The student videos live on in the National Parks Service website.
Attendance is rather lacking at this NPS site compared to Ellis Island, Federal Hall, and more recently, Hamilton Grange. Additionally, Grant’s legacy as a general and president is often overrun with misconceptions and misrepresentations. Together with park rangers, 40 students trekked through history to uncover fascinating truths about Ulysses S. Grant, finding that he had helped to introduce civil rights legislation half a century before the rest of the nation ready to have that discussion.
Students started this project not really sure how our nation’s historic sites and memorials tie into actual history. Through this unit they gained a better understanding of the roles that presidential figures play in the present and how they’re remembered, as they become the past.
Past projects undertaken by this class have included collaborations with Concerned New Yorkers, Art 21, and Pioneer Works to motivate socially active projects.
Alumni Panel, Spring 2016
A panel of five alumni from the Art + Education Programs, currently working in schools, museums and the larger community, advocating for social justice, returned to the Barney building to share their work and discuss life after NYU, with current and prospective students in the program. Individual presentations were followed by a question and answer session and a broader discussion around the importance of education and the realities of the profession.