History and family heritage set the theme for the children’s and teens’ classes of Through the Generations. The Museum reaches young people through classes on local campuses, after-school programs, summer art camps, and Saturday classes at the Museum.
Through the Generations encourages lively family discussions when participants are asked to research their own family history by interviewing an older family member about a special memory or a significant event in their life. This opens doors to memories that have not been shared with younger members of the family; they get a glimpse of what it was like growing up during an earlier time. To give the interviews visual form, participants explore different art materials. The family information is used to create narrative and biographical artworks. Images of their families appear in drawings, sculptures, and paintings.
During the first summer of the program, young people had fun with art and history at the Summer Art Camp. While younger children use simple, symbolic figures to quickly draw a scene in their backyard, the older ones take more time to concentrate on a detailed portrait of a family member. Everyone enjoyed a variety of materials and approaches, such as acrylic paints, watercolor, pencils, oil pastels, crayon, collage, mosaics, and clay. The idea of family heritage and culture will be tied in with art instruction during the second summer session in 2009, and the projects are adjusted to age and ability.
The Permanent Collection stimulates the imagination, and lectures are provided explaining who the artists were and how works were done. Art Camp participants spend time studying the permanent collection and discovering why the artists chose certain subjects to paint. What is so unique about the Valley landscape? Don’t those plants grow everywhere? And why were those buildings important? Students learn that the beauty of the region and its cultural traditions are legitimate and important subjects for artists.
During the Digital Art Camp (funded by the Texas Commission on the Arts), participants learned how to create art addressing heritage and history with new technologies, including how to use a digital camera and how computer software programs can be used to create art. In the classes taught on middle school and high school campuses, students saw slides of the BMFA Permanent Collection and learned about the history of the Museum and regional art. Students then created a work using individual symbols based on the theme of personal identity.
As recognition for the young people who took part in the program numerous art exhibitions have been held to showcase student art work from the program. Children and teens leave the program with an increased appreciation of their family history, a familiarity with the Museum’s Permanent Collection, a sense of importance of the border region, and the knowledge of art as a means of constructive self-expression.