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Visitors drew and painted a golden tiger inspired by the piece in the Terracotta Army exhibition. (Photo by David Stover courtesy VMFA ©)
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Collegiate students (from left) Vivian Xu, Phylicia Winston and Mo Lyu at Family Day (Photo courtesy Collegiate School)
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At June’s Family Day, children decorated gourds used as vessels in Ethiopia. (Photo by Jay Paul courtesy VMFA ©)
While Collegiate School students experience arts and culture as part of the standard curriculum, it's hands-on, real-world applications that drive home their significance. A new partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and its Family Days events has done just that.
Stacy Adams, Collegiate’s director of communications, introduced the partnership idea as a way to continue the school’s tradition of community volunteerism.
“I’m always looking for collaborative opportunities with local organizations that are like-minded around education,” Adams says. “It was a natural idea to see if the VMFA was willing to partner with us because they are doing more engagement-type events.”
Collegiate instills a responsible citizenship mission that has eight pillars, including civic and global engagement, service learning and entrepreneurship. The pillars are infused into the students’ daily curriculum. Through the partnership with VMFA, the students fulfill that mission by volunteering at Family Days.
Family Days at VMFA include cultural performances, demonstrations, workshops and art activities that are free to the public because of Collegiate’s and other organizations’ sponsorships.
The first 2018 Family Day in February centered around Chinese culture. That event drew thousands of people to the museum, including 60 Collegiate student volunteers who helped children with art activities. Another Family Day, “Celebrate African and African-American Art: Ethiopia,” was held in June, and “Celebrate the Art of Latin America: Patagonia” is planned for September.
Mo Lyu, a rising junior at Collegiate, volunteered at ChinaFest in February and helped visitors make models of Chinese kites. Lyu says the Family Day was a chance for her to promote her heritage as she is an international student from China.
“I concluded from my experience at the VMFA that a lot of people are willing to learn about and to accept a new culture, which is not surprising but still very comforting,” Lyu says. “Volunteering at this event has positively impacted me outside of the classroom in that I gained useful insights on coaching people and improved various abilities, such as communication skills.”
Celeste Fetta, VMFA director of education, says the students’ participation is pivotal.
“If you come to a Family Day, you’ll see that the intergenerational participation in all of the events is incredible,” Fetta says. “I think that having students interact with our young visitors to do these art projects, it’s almost like a peer-to-peer experience.”
With Collegiate as its Family Days education-related partner, the VMFA has been able to extend its outreach.
Collegiate will also be the JK-12 education partner of the “Fine Arts & Flowers” exhibition in October. Student musicians will perform at the exhibition, and parents have been encouraged to volunteer with their children. The proceeds from “Fine Arts & Flowers” will support a new mobile art museum that will bring art to hundreds of thousands of children outside of Richmond. “This [partnership] program is just one of many initiatives … that are benefiting schools of all shapes and sizes across the commonwealth,” Naomi Crown, VMFA corporate relations manager, says.
VMFA and Collegiate believe that art is the foundation of world understanding, as well as a vital component of everyday life. It’s a message both want to underscore and share with the region. Although that message is often shared with Collegiate students, Adams says, this partnership takes it a step further.
“We’ve always taken our students on a field trip to the museum to just go to the various exhibits to learn more about how the museum works,” Adams says. “So having this [relationship] gives us a whole other level of connection, and we’re really grateful for that.”
For VMFA, watching the Collegiate volunteers work with visiting children provides an opportunity to improve the museum’s own programs. Staff can observe how students learn and make adjustments to future programming “It’s important for us to be reflective of the forward-thinking education and learning styles that exist,” Fetta says. “We’re always experimenting.”
As for the future of the partnership, both Collegiate and VMFA say that there is potential to expand it. Most recently, it has opened doors to students looking to break into a career in art: Two seniors at Collegiate worked with VMFA staff for their final projects required to graduate.
Emily Yue worked on the “Humans of VMFA” project during her senior year, which highlights the inner workings of VMFA through interviews with educators, program directors, activity participants and anyone who had a hand in bringing art to the community.
“This capstone project with the VMFA was a great way to conclude my 13 years at Collegiate, as it was an eye-opening transition for me from the classroom to the real world,” Yue says. “As an art lover, I have always been curious about the jobs of the people who work at the museum as well as the ways in which the museum reaches out to the wider community.”
Yue says that the staff encouraged and supported her throughout the process, and allowed her to learn more about culture and the art community.
“I am certain that the Collegiate/VMFA partnership will be valuable to Collegiate students in stimulating their open-mindedness and in opening doors to show them new ways of learning,” Yue says.
Fetta says that she hopes the partnership will show students how the museum can be part of their lives far beyond their field trips and Family Days — “thinking about the museum as being a resource not only for their learning, but also for life experience; coming more often and weaving the museum more into their everyday life.”
