Cate Conmy
Mike Kaye teaches art to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at Intermediate School 49, a low-performing junior high school in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. He is cool, calm, speaks with a Brooklyn brogue, and wears tight-fitting tees that reveal his passion for weight lifting. Meredith McNeal is the Director of Education at the Rotunda Gallery, a nonprofit visual arts organization that works with Brooklyn-affiliated artists. McNeal is ebullient, with a penchant for wasabi peas, purple glasses, and dangly green earrings. In tandem, this unlikely duo has shaped an innovative art program that brings together similarly dissimilar entities in collaborations as surprising and successful as their own.
With the support of Empire State Partnerships–a New York State Council on the Arts and New York State Education Department joint project that bolsters arts education by fostering alliances between cultural organizations and schools–the Rotunda Gallery has expanded its original “Mini Museum” concept to create a full-time, long-term visual arts program at I.S. 49, in place since 1999. Through the Rotunda Gallery I.S. 49 Empire State Partnership, Kaye and McNeal introduce contemporary art and museum studies to a student population that has had little exposure to museum culture and the artistic process. The program is a super-sized version of the Rotunda Gallery’s school outreach program, the “Mini Museum.”
At the center of the I.S. 49 program is its gallery. With wall-to-wall carpeting, a red velvet curtain strung across the door, and linen-covered walls that conceal the bars on the windows, the gallery stands apart from the rest of the school. Designed and constructed by students with the help of teachers, it is a truly transformed space that, in turn, has transformative powers.
Since the gallery’s inception McNeal has seen it give birth to what she calls a “subtle undercurrent of reform” in the school. Teachers have become more flexible with their curricula and more relaxed about allowing students to visit the gallery during class time, for example. And students feel more comfortable admitting excitement over something that has to do with school. “Kids come in from the hallway and say ‘I want to do this,’” McNeal says with a smile. Kaye and McNeal also tell the tale of a student so eager that he attended every class a visiting artist was teaching–even the bilingual ones conducted in a language he didn’t speak. More dramatic changes have also occurred following the establishment of the gallery–like the school’s suspension rate, which decreased more than eight-fold from 2000 to 2002.
The entire school views each exhibition at I.S. 49, as do students from neighboring schools (who occasionally graduate to I.S. 49 already eager to take part in the “Mini Museum” program). Teachers incorporate the gallery into their curriculum. Bilingual classes receive tours in Spanish. Students are intimately involved with every detail of the gallery’s operation–they make the art, curate the exhibits, write the wall text, install the shows, and even work as guards.
The students who have the closest relationship with the gallery are probably the docents. The docents, or “museum professionals,” as they are called, are the gallery’s top bananas. They are also an eclectic bunch. For the privilege of working as the gallery’s ambassadors and guides, it is required that the museum professionals live up to their title. Often, it’s a pleasant surprise to discover which students succeed in doing so: like the tough kid who skips class but never misses giving a tour, or the occasional shy student who doesn’t speak for two semesters, then shocks her classmates and herself by volunteering for the third.
The last exhibition of the school year, Chronologies: An Artistic Look at Time, remained in the otherwise empty school building in July. For Chronologies, students worked with Shiro Sasaki, a visiting artist from Japan. Four times a year, the Rotunda Gallery recruits artists like Sasaki and brings them into I.S. 49. The students get the chance to learn about the artists’ process and to visit the gallery and see the artists’ work on display. Then it’s the students’ turn. Under the tutelage of the artists, Kaye, and McNeal, students create a range of pieces around a chosen theme. Later, they come together to select the best or most representative pieces and design the show.
Reflecting Sasaki’s influence, several of the works on display in Chronologies reference Japan. For the piece entitled Technologies from 800AD to Present: Illuminated Calligraphies, students used ancient Western calligraphy styles to pen the first letter of a word of their choice (‘everlasting,’ ‘gangsta,’ and ‘echo’are a few), and then employed advanced computer techniques to scan the letter, find a complementary computerized font, and complete the word. The finished words—seamless blends of the very old and the very new—are stitched together and hung from the wall in the shape of a kimono.
Conceptual and cutting edge art is coupled with traditional art throughout Chronologies. On another wall, students’ calm, muted Japanese brush and ink paintings represent the traditional, while the large installation piece Time Zone serves as a savvy conceptual commentary on the passing of time. Two old portable record players—found objects the students discovered in storage–sit under sterile white clocks hung hotel-lobby style, displaying Pacific Time, Mountain Time, Central Time, and Brooklyn time, respectively. Atop each record player spins a potted head of lettuce. The lettuce will remain until regular waterings no longer suffice, and then will be replaced by another organic object.
Lettuce is not the only plant life in the gallery. At its entrance is a simple vase that McNeal habitually replenishes with cut flowers, even when school is out. The students always notice the flowers, she reports. They’re thrilled to be treated like professionals, and are thrilled again when they realize that the flowers are real. The gallery is I.S. 49’s bouquet—it adds color and life to this city school. Through it, students experience the excitement of artistic creation, collaboration, and ownership, and receive a uniquely thorough exposure to contemporary art and museum practice—an experience as refreshing and new as their encounter with fresh flowers inside school walls.
Cate Conmy has taught English to middle-schoolers in China and currently works at a nonprofit that serves the international student population of New York City.
