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What is Art? 2015
What: An artist-in-residency program
Who: 136 Pre-K to 3rd grade children
When: Spring 2015-Fall 2015
Where: Mid-Bronx Head Start (Ogden Ave.), P.S. 55, P.S. 274
Funders: City Council Member Vanessa Gibson, LiRo Group
Program Description: What is Art? was offered at three different locations in 2015:
1. Mid-Bronx Head Start: In Spring 2015, Museum Teaching Artist and Assistant Program Manager Estelle Maisonett offered a professional development session about integrating art into the classroom to 15 early childhood educators at Mid-Bronx Headstart. A few weeks later, students were offered the chance to visit the “Rivers On the Go!” bus and participated in an arts workshop where they created individual Bronx River animal habitat collages using canvas boards, patterned paper, and colored tissue paper.
2. P.S. 55: As part of the Museum’s GreenArts Afterschool Program, What is Art? allowed 25 second grade children from P.S. 55 to visit the Museum of Modern Art to view the Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibit as part of their research for a collaborative art piece that was then displayed at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Students were given a guided tour and learned about the way Henri Matisse created work from paper during the last ten years of his life. After their visit, children worked collaboratively with Teaching Artist Natalie Wood to create a site-specific art installation entitled Paper Paradise which was then installed at the Bronx Museum of the Arts during Armory Week as part of the Bronx Arts Alliance exhibition.
3. P.S. 274: As part of the GreenArts Afterschool Program at P.S. 274, What is Art? partnered local artists with forty second grade children in the creation of two large scale murals. The Bronx Children’s Museum and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation collaborated, with the support of LiRo Group and City Council Member Vanessa Gibson, in the first phase of a unique afterschool mural program at Roberto Clemente State Park. During Phase One of the program, which took place in Fall 2015, museum artists Estelle Maisonett, Katherine Perez, and Natalie Wood (all from the Bronx) collaborated with a total of 40 children from the Supportive Children’s Advocacy Network (SCAN) at P.S. 274 to create the first two gigantic murals in a series of six murals depicting the Harlem River and its habitat. These two murals were unveiled to the families of the children, City Council Member Gibson, and private funders on December 10th.
After Phase Two is completed in May 2016, involving an additional 40 students from P.S. 274 (totaling 80), all six murals will be hung outside to decorate the construction fence outside the park’s main entrance plaza while that plaza and other parts of the park are renovated. Once the renovations are complete in 2017, the six murals will then be permanently installed inside the Roberto Clemente State Park premises.
