El Museo Del Barrio is a small museum with one major exhibit open for viewing at a time. It is important that in planning, you familiarize yourself with the particular exhibit available. Teaching with the exhibit content in mind, before the visit, will maximize the value of the field trip experience.
*Suggestions: Have students research an aspect of the exhibit's topic beforehand. That way, students will come prepared with a topic of focus for their visit. Instead of the museum visit initiating a conversation, it will enrich and deepen their already ongoing conversations. In addition, the actual conversation occuring during the exhibit will then be more engaging and free flowing.
Other possible lesson activities:
Artist study of one of the artist's at the exhibit, their history and their art
Explore some social issues that will come up during the exhibit
Explore art techniques of artists' highlighted at the exhibit and try them
DURING THE TRIP
The layout of the museum is circular, so the tour will pass by just about all of the art pieces. The guide will focus on the pieces that will best highlight the exhibits' intent. The pieces that are focused on change between age groups. At the pieces of focus, the guide will stop to engage the students in conversation, which includes questions. The guide will expect the students to respond and participate in crtical thinking prompts. There will probably be a common thread throughout the tour which will be emphasized during the workshop that follows.
After the tour, the students will be brought upstairs to a classroom. There, the guide will ask them to bring all of their thoughts to the table. In groups or individually, they will be asked to create some sort of art project. The project varies between age groups, but it will always further push their thinking by asking them to take what their learned from the exhibit and translate it into a visual.
*Suggestions: Since students may be asked to work in groups, it would be benifical to create the groups before attending the trip.
AFTER THE TRIP
Working a field trip into the curriculum is the best way to fully utilize the experience. Here are some suggestions for some follow-up activities to the trip:
Create your own art that is political or related to a social justic issue that the class has explored
Research more about an issue that sparked your interest (i.e. Los desaparecidoes of Argentina)
Write to the museum thanking them for having you or letting them know what the class has done in relation to the visit
Explore an artist from the exhibit and how their work was influencial
Exploring the art techniques used for the pieces at the exhibit