Docent in Training - Our Mentors

Hello again,

This weeks meeting was really exciting as we met our mentors. Some of the active docents have given their time to help us become ready to guide interested parties through the museum. After meeting them the mentors gave us some object interpretations and believe me it was most interesting. As I mentioned last week I stepped on my own tongue during my object interpretation, so, it was great to see how it really should be done.

I will list three of them. I have not yet asked permission to use names in this blog so will not name who gave which presentation. If I did not use your example and you read this blog, my apologies, it was not your interpretation just my need to conserve space. The point of tonight's exercise was to show different ways to interpret objects on our tours.

First was a brief talk about the museum itself including the Henry Moore sculpture in the front of the museum.

Henry Moore Sculpture

 Here is a picture of the sculpture. It exhibits all of Moore's strong, solid artistic ability.

Alexander Calder Study

Inside of the museum is the Alexander Calder study that was considered but not used. A beautiful piece and in my opinion, it displays Calder's playfulness.






















When viewing the very large Remington work Dash for the Timber we were asked what sounds would we hear if it was possible to hear the painting. Answers were horses' hoofs, Indians yelling, guns firing, pans clattering. We were then asked to emulate these sounds as a group. Imagine the fun of a bunch of adults making loud sounds. This is a great way to get people to really look at an action painting.

Dash for the Timber - 1889 Frederic Remington

 Another way to have people look at art is to do a comparison between two objects. The works, of course, need to be close enough to each other for a comparison. The active docent doing this interpretation chose two excellent examples.

Attention Company! - 1878 William Harnett

Attention Company! is one of William Harnett's few portraits. He was a trompe l'loeil (fool the eye) painter and mostly painted still lifes. He was an Irish-American painter and was born in County Cork Ireland during the time of the potato famine.

Woman Standing - 1878-1879 Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt was an impressionist painter from Pennsylvania that was befriended by Edgar Degas upon moving to Paris, where she spent the rest of her life. She exhibited with other impressionist painters and is best known for her women and children works.

We were asked to compare the two works for differences in the subjects. Notice I said subjects because it is obvious they are painted in two different styles. Two of the answers were: the young man is gazing out intently at you where the woman seems to be unaware she is being observed. The young man is poor as shown by his clothes where the woman is one of privilege, again as shown by her clothes. This is just another way to get people to really look at the painting. Perhaps you can also see differences in the subjects.

Our next class is not until Jan 3, 2019, and will be on 20th-century photography.

Until then,

Caroline