From the Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Looking at, Talking about, and Appreciating Art
FWMoA's Docent of the Year, Susan Elser, kicks off our newest blog post series "What We're Reading to You" with "The Museum" by Susan Verde. Stay tuned to participate in the activity following her read-aloud!
This weekend marks the closing of Heather Day's inaugural museum show at FWMoA. Due to COVID-19, we closed much earlier, so to mark the occasion we present to you our president and docents talking about her artwork to help continue the experience of this exhibition.
As we approach our 100th year anniversary, Sue Slick reads up on one of the founding fathers of the museum, Theodore F. Thieme.
Still confused about creating a lithograph! Come along with the docents as they practice making their own using materials from your kitchen!
Alyssa Dumire, Director of Children's Education If you happen upon a school tour at FWMoA, odds are you’ll probably see Michael leading a tour. In fact, if you got here from our blog’s home page, you’ve seen him there too! You’ll almost definitely find at least one of today’s featured docents leading any given school …
Continue reading "Docent Dialogue: Docent to Docent, A Docent Double Feature!"
Learning doesn’t stop when you leave the classroom, whether it’s for a field trip at the art museum or long after graduation day, and the education department at FWMoA is no exception! Read on to find out how one of our docents learns more about art every day.
With the start of the school year also comes the start of our docent training for the year. What better time to get to know another of our wonderful docents, Marlene Cooper! Marlene’s enthusiasm for and love of art is infectious. Read on, and watch a short interview, to see why FWMoA is her happy place and the children she gives tours to are her favorite people.
We’ve already profiled one of our illustrious docents, but today we’re looking a bit more closely at what it is that a docent actually does.
The word “docent” comes from the Latin docere, meaning “to teach.” Google the word, and that is what you will find on almost any website dedicated to docents, but we’re not here to talk dictionary definitions. What do docents mean to FWMoA and the community we serve?
Through our “Docent Dialogue” series we’ll learn a bit more about FWMoA’s greatest resources, the very special volunteers who make school tours possible—the Children’s Docents! They are the often-unsung heroes of the Children’s Education department and the roughly 7,000 students who tour the museum each year.
In this section of the blog we’ll be attempting to define different types of terms as they relate to art and creative expression. Our definitions will be rooted in what’s generally accepted among art world peers, but infused with our personal observations. And, in the art world, just as in the “real” world, terms have double meaning. “Value”, for example, a common term, refers to the lightness or darkness of a color, or it can express what the art itself is worth. For our first term, however, I hope to define “art,” a daunting task to be sure!