Apropos to my post last week about the value of college fine arts requirement classes, someone on my Twitter feed posted a link to a Huffington Post article about why you shouldn’t dismiss a work of visual art as something you or you kid could have done.
The article is actually based on on episode from PBS Digital’s series, The Art Assignment
Many of The Art Assignment episodes get people to go out and do or find things associated with their topic. However, some like the video above tackle how to relate and interact with art. As such, they provide a good starting point for novices, arts education programs and even arts educators seeking a way to communicate on these topics.
What is great is that everything comes back to the philosophy of experiential learning. So even though they say, yeah it isn’t as easy to do as you think, bub. They immediately follow with, but you should totally try to do it!
Among the videos I found that work along these lines are episodes on How to Critique, what works you can and can’t touch and why, and how (and why) to learn about Contemporary Art.
Recently it appears they have started to an effort to help people understand the work of specific artists in The Case for Mark Rothko and The Case for Andy Warhol.
This looks to be a good resource for visual arts organizations and something to keep an eye on as they continue to develop episodes.
The series leads to the inevitable question– can something this effective and humorous be created for theater, opera, dance, classical music? (Yes, of course it can.) I am sure there are some out there. Even some visual arts ones similar to the Arts Assignment episodes.
Heck, Thug Notes points out things in literature I didn’t catch when I was reading the works and is very entertaining.
So maybe someone is doing it right now and I don’t know about it. Let me know.
Maybe someone is thinking about doing something similar but is worried about the funding and should contact the Venture Arts Incubator.