FAMSF Teacher Workshop

Welcome to the resources page for the upcoming workshop at the de Young! We are very much looking forward to meeting everyone. Below are some details and links to help you get ready - but don't worry if you don't have a chance to view them before the 31st. This page will stay up for your reference after the workshop as well.

The Science of Art: Art Conservation and the Classroom

Saturday May 31, 2014, 10 am – 1 pm de Young

Join educators and art conservators from FAMSF and the Cleveland Museum of Art to learn how to expose your students to the inquiry-based and interdisciplinary mode of looking used by conservators. This approach not only illuminates a new perspective on museum collections, but enables teachers to integrate topics from science, history, math and other subjects into exciting and collaborative lesson plans. This event is offered in conjunction with the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) 2014 conference.

Andy Goldsworthy's Drawn Stone

Agenda

We'll start with a gallery tour led by Cleveland Museum of Art conservator Colleen Snyder and de Young Museum educator Emily Jennings. After visiting three works in the galleries and discussing how conservation can provide a new lens for looking at and understanding a work of art, we'll adjourn to a classroom for a short presentation from Colleen about why conservation is so well-suited to K-12 teaching, and an exploration of the different ways that conservators and educators can work together. There will be ample time for discussion and brainstorming, so bring your questions and ideas!

Drawn Stone

We'll start our tour by talking about Andy Goldsworthy's Drawn Stone, a site-specific work made by the artist for the de Young Museum.

- Video: Get a rare glimpse of the artist at work installing this piece.

- Listen: Conservator Lesley Bone speaks about the challenges of preserving this work of art on a day to day basis.

The Cup We All Race 4

We'll move then to this popular painting by Frederick Peto. This trompe l'oeil painting was recently studied by de Young painting conservator Elise Effman Clifford with some fascinating results.

Electromagnetic spectrum in art conservation

- Read Clifford's article describing her findings.

- We'll be talking more about the techniques that she used and how conservators utilize the electromagnetic spectrum to examine and analyze works of art. For for a quick primer on that, here's a great infographic courtesy of paper conservator Jodie Utter from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Smiling Figure

Finally, we'll move to the galleries for the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, and discuss this ceramic Smiling Figure from the Veracruz culture in Mexico. Ceramic is a ubiquitous and familiar material, but one which allows a wide variety of fascinating inquiries into material properties and working techniques.

- The entry for a similar figure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art provides some background on these figures' mysterious function and origins.

- Watch a conservator discuss an African terracotta sculpture and explain how the ceramic was securely dated.

- Archaeosoup presents an in-depth explanation of the thermoluminescence (TL) technique for dating ceramics and other fired materials.

General information about conservation

Conservation at FAMSF

If you have time before or after your visit, read up on conservation activities at the deYoung on their blog, or watch this short video "Who is a Museum Conservator?", narrated by FAMSF conservator Lesley Bone.

AIC links

The American Institute for Conservation Resource Center has links to a number of useful pages on their site. Stories in Conservation highlights interesting projects, while the FAQ answers general questions about conservation; Caring for your Treasures presents an overview of how to care for common types of art objects.

The K-12 Educational Outreach page presents a selection of interesting sites and links as well as information on how to contact a conservator in your area interested in outreach to schools or working with students and teachers. Additional links are going up on the conservation wiki (see link at the bottom of this page). Please help us make these resources better - let us know what you'd like to see!

Back to K-12 Resources