IU Art Museum receives grant

The IU Art Museum is one of five nationwide recipients of a chairman’s “sizable” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for Picturing America, IU Art Museum curator Edward Maxedon said.\nPicturing America is a new initiative by the NEH to bring American art into classrooms to facilitate understanding of art and American history, according to an IU press release. \nMaxedon wrote a proposal for IU to receive the grant. He said the museum strives to teach different disciplines, including history, through art to elementary school students in area counties. \nMaxedon said some of the grant money was used to organize a workshop for elementary school teachers June 12-14, where educators will learn how to bring art and history together. Maxedon said the seats for the workshop have already been filled.\n“It empowers the students to be actively a part of art,” he said. \nMaxedon explained one technique used to teach patrons and students about art, object-directive teaching, where visitors learn visual exercises using objects to gain more perspective in viewing works of art and build their art vocabulary. \n“They themselves bring their own experience to the galleries,” he said. “These are tools to help them when they visit other museums.” \nMaxedon said plans for the grant money include bringing art and history graduate students into elementary school classrooms to teach students more about art during the fall 2008 semester. Another plan includes a fifth-grade tour program where students visit exhibits of American artwork that deal with subjects in Indiana’s curriculum standards, he said. \nGrant coordinator Joanne Cross said the fifth-grade tour will include the Benton Murals displayed in Woodburn Hall 100, as well as other works displayed at the IU Art Museum. She also said works by American artists such as Stuart Davis and Jasper Cropsey will also be a part of the tour. \nCross said she is excited about the art museum receiving this grant and said the money is being put to good use. \n“I’m very proud of (Maxedon) for writing such a wonderful grant proposal,” she said. “This is a very big deal.” \nCross said she hopes the grant money will be used to open elementary students to art while keeping to state standards. \n“It’s a wonderful outreach for students to come to the art museum for the tour and to look at American art,” she said. \n“Art has a way of opening up the experience to children so that they can visualize it and pick their interests.”