FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (10/96)
SHREVEPORT, LA -- Officials from the Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College of Louisiana and Riverside Elementary School in Caddo Parish have been invited by the Getty Education Institute For The Arts to participate in a national conference on Art Museum/School Collaborations.
The invitational conference for museum educators and art teachers, "Learning From Works of Art Through Museum/School Collaborations," will be held Nov. 7-9 at the Dallas Museum of Art.
The National Center for Art Museum/School Collaborations (NCAMSC) at the University of North Texas, funded by the Getty Institute, identified some of the most innovative art museum/school collaborative programs in the south and southwest. NCAMSC selected 25 participants in teams of two and three to participate. Each team includes at least one representative from a museum and one school teacher, and some include a representative from school administration.
The Meadows Museum-Riverside Elementary Art/Technology Partnership was selected to represent Louisiana. The participants are Judy Godfrey, director of Centenary's Meadows Museum, Margaret Holt, art-technology coordinator at Riverside Elementary, and Sonja Webb, instructional technology specialist at the Caddo Parish School Board Central Office. The Meadows Museum is the only college or university museum selected to participate.
The museum's "pARTnership" program focuses on the Indochina Collection by Jean Despujols. The fourth grade multimedia research project involves all fourth grade students at Riverside. The program is designed to increase students' academic performance, particularly study skills and language expression skills, to utilize community resources, and to give students an excitement for education. Students visit the Meadows Museum to learn about the function of a museum and to study the Jean Despujols Drawings and Paintings of Indochina.
Students develop research skills by using the school library, working with museum consultants, and retrieving information from the Internet. Teamed in groups of five or six students, they use the information collected to produce videos, slide shows, booklets and computer presentations on Indochina and the art of Jean Despujols.
The research and documentary production culminates with an "opening night" showing of the students' finished projects. This project is an exemplary collaboration of classroom teachers including science, social studies, language arts, the school librarian, the art/technology teacher, Meadows Museum staff, technology consultants and parent and community volunteers.
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