GETTY MUSEUM PICKS BARBARA KRUGER FOR LAUSD ARTS PROGRAM

by LA School Report | http://bit.ly/1s5uxfY

October 6, 2014 12:16 pm   ::  Art is returning to LA Unified — in one project, anyway.

The J. Paul Getty Museum has selected Barbara Kruger for the 2014 Getty Artists Program, a collaboration this year with two schools to encourage students to develop a project of their choosing.

Krueger, whose work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will engage students on a series of art, writing, and critical thinking projects.

<<Piece by artist Barbara Kruger

The theme of the project: Whose Values?

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to expose high school students to the artistic philosophy of one of the world’s most well-known and respected artists,” Toby Tannenbaum, assistant director for education at the J. Paul Getty Museum, said in a statement. “Barbara has, from the beginning, been an enthusiastic and involved participant in developing the program, and we look forward to this year’s student projects.”

Kruger, who is known for her large-scale and immersive image, text, and video installations that address provocative social, cultural and political issues will join forces with 11th and 12th graders from Grover Cleveland High School’s Humanities Magnet and Academy of Art and Technology as well as with 12th graders from Chatsworth High School’s Humanitas Academy of Education and Human Services.

She intends to engage in small and large-format discussions and activities supporting collaborative art and writing projects connected to core curricular themes of social justice, identity, race, gender and advocacy.

“The Getty Artists Program is an opportunity for me to encourage students to try to visualize, musicalize, and textualize their experience in the world,” Kruger said. “I know that this creation of commentary can change lives, encourage ambition, and suggest the pleasure of learning.”   

One thought on “Getty Museum picks Barbara Kruger for LAUSD arts program”

• Offred Gillead on October 6, 2014 2:07 pm at 2:07 pm said:

  Those students at Cleveland and Chatsworth won the Golden Ticket.

  They are indeed going to get an education under Barbara Kruger.

  It’s the sort of education ALL of our kids need.

  Kruger has said, “The importance of teaching as a profession has been tragically undervalued and the result will be a diminished American culture. And the place of the arts in the classroom is essential in encouraging invention, ambition, and an understanding of the importance and pleasures of living an examined life.”

  In her most famous art piece, Kruger proclaimed: “Your body is a battleground,”

  Well kids, “Your classroom is a battleground.”

  “Your teacher is a battleground”

  “Your mind is a battleground.”

  Those kids will be exposed to great critical thinking ideas that true education engenders–particularly for our most vulnerable children:

  Political awareness over WHO controls their lives.

  Kruger says of her art, “I think that I’m trying to engage issues of power and sexuality and money and life and death and power. Power is the most free-flowing element in society, maybe next to money, but in fact they both motor each other.”

  Put that in a standardized test.