the conservation of artworks

      During week five of my Art at The Museum course, our class toured the conservation facilities of the St. Louis Art Museum. We listened to an expert in this field, Laura Gorman, discuss her methods and philosophy in artifact restoration. According to Gorman, museums decide to restore objects so that visitors may develop a superior visual comprehension of how artworks and objects looked and functioned when these were first made. 

      Ms. Gorman does not permanently alter the objects; every bit of paint and filler can be removed easily if curators should prefer to do so. Her work is really quite delicate and extraordinary. She matches colors perfectly. The students could not seriously discern between her work and the original fragments of the restored pottery she was working with. The restored object she had just completed, an incense burner, was a part of the Meso-American collection on display at the museum right now. 
      The museum also has lesson plan packets for sale. One of these is about museum conservation and restoration. I have not been able to locate it in their online shop. Teachers probably need to call instead to special order these materials from the museum. (314-721-0072)

      The video above is of a similar facility located in DC.. Including a unit lesson plan in your art classroom about museum conservation prior to a field trip to an art museum is a great idea. Curriculum such as this would help students to appreciate the collections they will view and develop a greater understanding of why collections are preserved and displayed in the first place. 

• Conservation and Scientific Research at the Walters Art Museum 
• Conservation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Conservation happens at J. Paul Getty Museum
• Protecting and Preserving the MoMA Collection

The history of the picture study movement

      The study of art appreciation in America began with the Picture Study Movement in the late 1800’s and began to fade at the end of the 1920’s. Picture study was an important part of the art education curriculum. Attention to the aesthetics in classrooms led to public interest in beautifying the school, home, and community, which was known as “Art in Daily Living”. The idea was to bring culture to the child to change the parents.

      Picture study was made possible by the improved technologies of reproduction of images, growing public interest in art, the Progressive Movement in education, and growing numbers of immigrant children who were more visually literate than they were in English. The type of art included in the curriculum was from the Renaissance onward, but nothing considered “modern art” was taught. Often, teachers selected pictures that had a moral message. This is because a major factor in the development in aesthetics as a subject was its relationship to the moral education of the new citizens due to the influx of immigrants during the period. Aesthetics and art masterpieces were part of the popular idea of self culture, and the moralistic response to an artwork was within the capabilities of the teacher, who often did not have the artistic training to discuss the formal qualities of the artwork.

      A typical Picture Study lesson was as follows: Teachers purchased materials from the Perry Picture Series, for example. This is similar to the prepackaged curriculum we have today. These materials included a teacher’s picture that was larger for the class to look at together, and then smaller reproduction approximately 2 ¾” by 2” for each child to look at. These were generally in black and white or sepia tone. Children would often collect these cards and trade them much like modern day baseball cards. The teacher would give the students a certain amount of information about the picture and the artist who created it, such as the picture’s representational content, artist’s vital statistics, and a few biographical details about the artist. These were all included in the materials so an unskilled teacher could still present the information to his or her class. Then the teacher would ask a few discussion questions. Sometimes suggestions for language arts projects or studio activities were included in the materials.

      The picture study movement died out at the end of the 1920’s as a result of new ideas regarding learning art appreciation through studio work became more popular in the United States. (Wikipedia.com)

• Charlotte Mason Picture Study
• History of Art Education
• The Lost Journal of An Art Educator

Teaching art to the blind student

       By Definition, Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.

      Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define "blindness." Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as "NLP," an abbreviation for "no light perception." Blindness is frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with residual vision. Those described as having only "light perception" have no more sight than the ability to tell light from dark. A person with only "light projection" can tell the general direction of a light source.

      In order to determine which people may need special assistance because of their visual disabilities, various governmental jurisdictions have formulated more complex definitions referred to as legal blindness. In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet (6.1 m) from an object to see it—with vision correction—with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet (61 m). In many areas, people with average acuity who nonetheless have a visual field of less than 20 degrees (the norm being 180 degrees) are also classified as being legally blind. Approximately ten percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no vision. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Low vision is sometimes used to describe visual acuities from 20/70 to 20/200.

      By the 10th Revision of the WHO International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death, low vision is defined as visual acuity of less than 6/18, but equal to or better than 3/60, or corresponding visual field loss to less than 20 degrees, in the better eye with best possible correction. Blindness is defined as visual acuity of less than 3/60, or corresponding visual field loss to less than 10 degrees, in the better eye with best possible correction.

      It should be noted that blind people with undamaged eyes may still register light non-visually for the purpose of circadian entrainment to the 24-hour light/dark cycle. Light signals for this purpose travel through the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT), so a damaged optic nerve beyond where the RHT exits it is no hindrance." (Wikipedia.com)

There are two types of drawing boards for the blind. Every blind child or adult attending an art class or learning to draw should have one of the two types:

1. A raised-line drawing board
2. A raised line drawing kit

Blind students can also explore thermoform plastic
pages that include both raised pictures and braille.
Tactile surfaces such as these, provide even more opportunities
for blind students to experience the art of illustration.

A thermoform page illustrating the scripture and a lion.

One of thirteen thermoform plastic pages I created
for a Christian calendar. This one is of a man
in the belly of a fish. These unique calendars for
the blind may be purchased through Lutheran
Blind Missions. All of the proceeds help support
their mission to teach the blind about the love
 of Christ.

Articles about teaching art to the blind:

1. Blind children in UK experience Olympics through sound, touch
2. About Art Education for the Blind
3. Artist uses ceramics as medium to link sighted, non-sighted individuals
4. Accessibility Art Education For The Blind at the Cummer Museum
5. The Blind Child In The Regular Elementary Classroom
6. Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month
7. Technology to help blind students in regular-ed classrooms
8. This was no art lesson
9. About Art Education for The Blind 
10. A lesson I wrote for teaching blind students to differentiate between abstract and realistic portraiture 

Interactive art museums & internet art websites for art educators

       Last semester, I participated in a course offered to pre-service teachers at the St. Louis Art Museum. This class met early in the morning, one day a week, and lasted for four hours. I loved taking course work at this location. Museums offer so many different resources for art teachers. I've listed below some of my favorite interactive art museums on the web.

• Bridges to Art is at the Worcester Museum of Art, Massachusetts
• ArtZeum by Telfair Museums
• Utah Museum of Fine Arts , Virtual Exhibitions
• Free Podcasts About Great Art at Sheldon
• The Corning Museum of Glass 
• Wacky Kids by the education department at the Denver Art Museum
• Resources for Students from The Getty
• Heard Museum Past Exhibition
• ArtBabble presents Tag Tours from the Indianapolis Museum of Art
• NGA kids by the National Gallery
• Destination Modern Art by MoMA.org
• SAM sites for teachers by the Seattle Art Museum
• Philadelphia Museum of Art 
• The National Museum of The American Indian
• What Is Printmaking?  from Saint Louis Art Museum 

U.S. State Teacher Licensure Offices

       Oh, hallelujah! I have just passed the praxis test! What a relief. I've been working on my certification for a couple of years in my spare time and now I will start student teaching this Spring. For those of you who know me as a painter this may sound a little confusing. Yes, I do teach art, but not in public schools. Although I have a Masters Degree, in the fine arts, I thought it necessary to return to collage to get certified to teach small children before entering to the job market. I've included here links to the praxis people and all of the State Licensure web pages for those of you who would like to do the same.

A Certified Art Teacher is a teacher who has earned credentials from an authoritative source, such as the government, a higher education institution or a private source. These certifications allow teachers to teach in schools that require authorization in general, as well as allowing educators to teach in particular content areas and across the curriculum. While many authorizing entities require student teaching before earning teacher certification, routes vary from country to country.

      Teachers in almost all states must have a Bachelor's degree with the appropriate teacher preparation course and complete either a content-based or teaching-based Master's degree within a stated number of years. Additionally, to be permanently certified, many states require that teachers pass exams on pedagogy, general knowledge and knowledge of a content area. Some states require teacher candidates to be fingerprinted prior to certification.

      The two companies responsible for developing and administering the majority of teacher certification tests in the United States are Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Evaluation Systems group of Pearson Education (formerly National Evaluation Systems, Inc.). ETS offers the Praxis tests, which are standardized across the nation ("off-the-shelf tests"), while Pearson customizes each testing program for the individual state in which it is offered. In general, it is easier to transfer certification between two states that both use the Praxis test, as the retaking of tests is usually not required in those instances. Contracts to manage state testing procedures are usually put out for bidding from different testing companies every 4-6 years. (wikipedia.org)

The following updated links Feb. 10th 2024.

Links to U.S. State Teacher Licensure Offices:

1. Alabama
2. Alaska 
3. Arizona 
4. Arkansas 
5. California 
6. Colorado 
7. Connecticut 
8. Delaware
9. District of Columbia 
10. Florida 
11. Georgia 
12. Hawaii 
13. Idaho 
14. Illinois 
15. Indiana 
16. Iowa 
17. Kansas 
18. Kentucky 
19. Louisiana
20. Maine 
21. Maryland
22. Massachusetts
23. Michigan 
24. Minnesota 
25. Mississippi 
26. Missouri 
27. Montana 
28. Nebraska 
29. Nevada 
30. New Hampshire 
31. New Jersey 
32. New Mexico 
33. New York 
34. North Carolina 
35. North Dakota 
36. Ohio 
37. Oklahoma
38. Oregon
39. Pennsylvania
40. Rhode Island 
41. South Carolina
42. South Dakota 
43. Tennessee 
44. Texas 
45. Utah 
46. Vermont 
47. Virginia 
48. Washington 
49. West Virginia
50. Wisconsin 
51. Wyoming 
52. U.S. Dept. of Defense Dependent Schools