Visual Learning Conference

September 30, 2012
8:30-10:00 AM, Weitz Center Cinema

Creative Collaborations: facilitating immersive student learning experiences 
Bruce Scherting, Director of Exhibits and Design, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute Natural History Museum (KUNHM), KU Museum Studies Program Lecturer, MUSE 703 Exhibition Planning and Design

A course exploring exhibition planning and design at the University of Kansas takes students out of the classroom, across campus and into the community to engage them in an immersive experience with a foundation in collaborative learning. This results in exhibitions and on-line visual assets for university and community “clients.” A team-based approach is employed where students drive their learning as co-designers and co-learners, working with a client, content specialists and venders in problem-solving and project implementation scenarios. Through this process students learn to negotiate responsibilities and improve interpersonal team building skills, project management, communication, concept visualization and visual thinking skills, as well as how to build professional relationships.

The clients (host institution) get highly motivated students to help their institution develop physical or digital assets to fulfill their mission and audience needs. Students gain valuable experience, unique resumé highlights that set them apart for future job searches, and most importantly, self-confidence. The University gains recognition for community service and engagement.

Bruce Scherting has over 24 years of exhibition development, design and fabrication experience across a variety of cultural institutions including the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. For eight years he taught several undergraduate museum studies courses at the University of Iowa and for the past nine exhibition planning and design in the University of Kansas Graduate Museum Studies Program. He earned a BS from Eastern Montana College (now Montana State University Billings) and an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

Curating the Veterans Book Project
Patricia Briggs, Director and Curator of Galleries, University of Wisconsin-Parkside

University of Wisconsin-Parkside Gallery worked with artist Monica Haller’s Veterans Book Project (VBP) to organize a community-wide exhibition. The VBP is a collection of thirty books created collaboratively by the artist with veterans and others with first-hand experience of war. Parkside Galleries worked with four local institutions to simultaneously exhibit the collection throughout the community. The gallery director worked with faculty across the humanities to build curriculum links with the VBP before the exhibition was mounted and these efforts were rewarded. A theater arts senior seminar developed an original script based on theVBP and a graphic design class designed a book, which is now one of the volumes of the VBP’s growing library. The VBP is a flexible artwork which links well with campus curriculum and provides bridges with the community.

Patricia Briggs is Director and Curator of the Art Galleries at UW-Parkside. She has been a contributor to Artforum since 1996. Her writing appears in History of Photography, Women’s Art Journal, Senses and Society, Art on Paper, and other print and online journals. She has curated exhibitions for the Weisman Art Museum, Phipps Center for the Arts, Plains Art Museum, and the Tweed Museum of Art. She writes the blog Scene Unseen: Viewing Notes, which covers art in Racine, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. She received her PhD in art history for the University of MN.

From White Walls to Library Halls: The Hybridization of Visual Art Access
Tony Preston-Schreck, Curator and Interpretive Programs Coordinator, University Galleries of Illinois State University

Declining patronage of both museum and gallery spaces has prompted the redefinition of access for numerous institutions; University Galleries of Illinois State University has devised a method to interrupt this development. Drawing upon historical precedents and community collaborations, University Galleries’ community outreach and interpretive program component—the Mobile Projects Unit—uses a cyclical model for learning that is reliant upon contemporary artistic practices and trans-disciplinary collaborations to hybridize the campus, community, and classroom. As a result, access to gallery resources—exhibitions, publications, tours, and interpretive programming—has increased 3-fold for K-12 students. Further, accessibility to gallery resources has increased for university faculty and staff, in addition to regional community members traditionally unfamiliar with program offerings.

Since its inception in 2010, the Mobile Projects Unit has relied upon a multivalent approach to exhibitions by redefining traditional boundaries. From satellite exhibitions within the community, programs taken into the schools, and the expanded use of technology, interest in visual art has expanded to include many new advocates.

Through the combination of research-driven and anecdotal insights provided by this new effort, the Mobile Projects Unit of University Galleries continues to produce widening rings of access that expand into the community, helping to redefine the expectations of both the academy and individual patrons.

Tony Preston-Schreck joined the staff of University Galleries in January, 2010. Prior to becoming Curator, he served as Education Coordinator at the McLean County Arts Center beginning in the fall of 2006. During the breadth of the past decade, he has worked within various capacities of the regional and international art worlds, including: docent, installations and exhibitions specialist, art handler, outreach coordinator, educator, and curator. He received his MS from Illinois State University’s, School of Communication in 2006, with emphases in media studies and visual rhetoric.  He received his BFA in Metals from ISU’s School of Art in 1999.

Moderator:
Kelly Connole
Associate Professor of Art