On Thursday this week, I was invited by Jessica to observe a Walker virtual art tour! This tour was focused on grades 6-12, and was attended by a high school group. During the tour, the students were taught a method of visual analysis to help them understand contemporary artwork using an example, and then looked at three pieces as a group. Most of the group was pretty quiet, but a few students were very engaged and were using the chat to respond to every question and every piece. After the tour, myself and the team of educators, Jessica, Roman, and Savannah, stayed for a couple more minutes to discuss some of what worked well, and what could increase engagement for another group that age, and whether or not a couple of the questions about gender roles could be posed in a more advanced way for this age group.
I really feel that the Walker’s approach to teaching visual analysis is very effective with having students start out with simple observations about color, form, etc before moving on to providing context and then reflecting about what the piece might mean. In my art class at that age, my class had a slightly different approach to visual analysis and the importance of making simple observations beyond the media used was not emphasized enough, which led to myself and other students not recognizing the importance of that step, and made the analysis process unnecessarily difficult. I noticed that students were the most engaged with that first step of the process, and even though it is the most simple step of the process, definitely cannot be skipped over, and it seems as if they left the tour recognizing the importance of that step. Overall the students who were participating seemed to have gotten a lot out of the tour and are able to better connect with artwork they view in the future!