Open Studio: All About Me Flags Free Community Artmaking Monday, May 27, 2024 3 PM to 5 PM Pier 57 Pier 57, 11th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Media Inquiries: adam@culturalcounsel.com RSVP Yoko Ono, Imagine Peace, 2017. Courtesy of Creative Time, New York. LaToya Ruby Frazier, FLINT 1,462 days and counting man-made water crisis, 2018. Presented as part of Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance, 2017-2018. Courtesy the artist and Creative Time, New York. Photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli. In honor of Memorial Day, children will design and create their own flag representing their individual identities. They’ll gain inspiration from artists such as Yoko Ono and LaToya Ruby Frazier , who create politically conscious flags that raise awareness for society’s pressing issues. About Open Studio Open Studio at Pier 57 invites children to explore hands-on projects across a wide range of artistic disciplines. Each session introduces children to the elements and principles of art while surveying artists across generations and continents. Specially designed for children on the Autism Spectrum but welcoming to all, each session is multisensory focused. Participants will explore art materials (such as clay, paper, or textiles) at their own pace alongside movement breaks and ample time for storytelling and social interaction. Open Studio is recommended for ages 12 & under. What To Expect This activity takes place in the Community Classrooms at Pier 57, located just beyond the food hall. The program’s curriculum is rooted in accessible artmaking practices and Children’s Museum of the Arts’ pedagogy of Look, Make, Share. Take a peek at one of our virtual Inclusives lessons, catered to children with Autism, that families can try at home: here ! Please be advised this is not a dropoff session. While caregivers are welcome to stay with their children, families are encouraged to enjoy the extraordinary setting of Pier 57 in the adjacent Family Living Room for the duration of the session. Caregivers are advised to remain on the premises while children are working. Image Credit: Yoko Ono, Imagine Peace , 2017. Courtesy of Creative Time, New York. Children's Museum of the Arts' Open Studio at Pier 57 is generously supported by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, William Talbott Hillman Foundation, The LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Google Community Grants Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Harriet Ames Charitable Trust, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and the Viniar Family Foundation. Additional support is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Donate Now

2/28/24 Studio Visit In the Studio with Clare Kambhu Former CMA Resident Artist Clare Kambhu opens the door of her studio to discuss her background as an NYC public school teacher, the paintings she created in residency at CMA, and what's on her bookshelf. Click to expand media gallery. As part of CMA's Residency for Experimental Arts Education, Clare Kambhu led an after school art program at Trinity Commons and taught art to fifth graders at Children's Workshop School , a progressive public elementary school in NYC's East Village. Below, visit Clare in her Jackson Heights studio and get a glimpse at her artistic process. CMA: Let’s start with this painting in progress, which most noticeably features your CMA ID. Clare: I started this painting at Trinity Commons as part of my CMA residency. I had the still life set up on the table next to me with students stationed around the classroom. It includes both my CMA ID and UFT Teachers Union ID. This painting is a slow buildup of myopic details rather than something that I have to keep stepping back and forth from. It made sense to do as the "resident" of the Trinity space, because I could work on it and then go and see what a student was doing, and then come back and then they could see what I was doing. I could get up and go back to it pretty easily. That's why I like small still lifes because they don’t take up too much space. How do you know when a work is done? I usually have a series of steps that I set out to do, and then another series of steps emerges as I'm painting. I write them down or keep them in my head. Some of them, I write them down on the painting. Sometimes it stays on the painting when it’s done, and sometimes they get covered up. This painting, RULER, has a lot of steps written on it in the whiteboard area. When I run out of steps, then a painting is done. "Add something" What is RULER? RULER is a tool that some schools use. It stands for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating. The school I most recently taught at used RULER to help students develop metacognition around their emotions and regulate emotions. I don't have a particular stance on it one way or the other. It's just an intimidating, scary sounding acronym. I had to find other ways to use it in practice with high school students because they get cynical about things like that, understandably. It’s a continuum of energy from low energy to high energy, and then a continuum of pleasantness from low pleasantness to high pleasantness. The idea is when you come into a room or whenever you are feeling something, you plot it on this axis. So low energy, low pleasantness would be depressed and high energy, high pleasantness would be ecstatic. Low energy, high pleasantness would be at peace. Clare's work on display at Kasmin Gallery during SUMMER SCHOOL in 2023 So it's a secret way for kids to learn geometry? More like it relies on those skills too. I also wonder about the codification of emotions in this way, because it takes students away from using language to describe their emotions. It does, however, create a shorthand for delving into your interior life. The idea of using RULER in a school space is that you're not caught off guard by your feelings, and then you don't have an outburst. There's a regulatory purpose that is sometimes negative, but then there's also a really helpful part of it. Do you feel that RULER relates to how you see education as taking place in an institutionalized, regulated space? Yeah. I’m not against it – these sorts of procedures are designed to help people get along with each other on a basic level. But some of it takes away some of the exuberance you experience from being a person. At the same time, when you put 30 people together in a room, you have to regulate yourself in order to not impose on other people. I'm not opposed to people being self-aware and acting out with awareness of what others are doing, and you learn that sort of thing in school. It's not a one-sided thing where one side is dehumanizing us or the other. The ideal situation is in the middle. What strikes me the most about these paintings are the color and patterns of the whiteboard. Do you feel that this aspect of the painting shows your abstract side? Yes. That area and a lot of the reflections are semi-invented. I'm looking at a chair in real life, but it might not be that same color in the painting. I'm just inventing it. Sometimes I leave a line of the underpainting visible. Here’s a bit of the whiteboard peeking through. The reflections are also a place where I can play within something that's really structured. My older, smaller paintings were made from observation in a school setting. There’s more subdued meditation when you paint from observation. The larger paintings start from observation of a still life setup. I finish the larger paintings in my head, so to speak, so there’s more invention. Are these the largest paintings you've ever done? They are the largest paintings on a single canvas or panel I've ever done. I have some stuff from grad school that's bigger, but it's composed of tiles so it takes up more space. Tell us about your abstract works. I started creating them in quarantine. I enjoy doing them in notebooks. Similar to the brushstrokes on my larger paintings, the excess brushstrokes become a texture or base for the rest of the work. The bleed-through in a notebook from one page to the next becomes part of it. They usually take me anywhere from a few hours to a few days to complete. They are more a way to play and learn about my tendencies. You taught abstraction to fifth graders at Children’s Workshop School as part of your CMA residency, which culminated in a field trip to Pace Gallery to see Maysha Mohamedi’s Gamebreaker exhibition. What surprised you about the students’ reactions to abstract paintings? I wasn't sure how fifth graders would respond to abstractions. I didn't know if they would just want to draw cats, because I probably would have. Actually, I would have wanted to draw aliens if I was 10. Some students did want to draw specific things, but for the most part they made really amazing art. Children's Workshop School What are you working on now? Right now I'm working on these two text paintings, and I'm about to return to the larger chair seat ones. My former grad school professor just retired from teaching high school, and he’s now involved with a nonprofit art center upstate. He’s curating work of mine for an exhibition at Garner Art Center in Garnerville, New York. I’m going to show the large paintings that I created during my CMA residency and some of the earlier ones I made in classrooms for context. Do you have a favorite memory or interaction with a student that sustains you? When you ask that, images of students who I've worked with over the years flash in my mind. There isn’t one instance that makes me say, this is why I do this. It's a daily sense of meaning. Have you taught other grades besides high school? When I was in college, I worked in an after school program for middle schoolers, not even thinking I would become a teacher, just as a job. Aside from workshops here and there and my experience with CMA, I have taught almost entirely in high school, everything from Intro to Art to IB Visual. With high schoolers, do you feel that you are able to focus more on art and less on behavior management? I initially became a high school teacher for that reason, to be able to get more into the art stuff. Now that I myself am older, I don't know if that's actually true. There's really interesting things to think about with younger kids too, but you have to frame it in a totally different way. Fifth graders from Children's Workshop School create abstract paintings during one of Clare's lessons Do you think you'll end up back in the classroom? Now that I'm working in an administrator role at NYU, I miss being in the classroom a lot. However, I wake up without the sense of like, oh my God, I have to speak all day in front of 150 people! My dream job would be to teach on a college professor's schedule, but with kids. I also really like working with student teachers. I would love to do that. What is something about teaching that most people don’t realize? The people I've learned the most from are seasoned teachers who have been there for 20 years. Teaching is something that you get better at over time, like any craft. You have to do it for a long time to get better at it. Just like with painting. Your paintings show an emotional void – the school chair that holds boisterous students all day, suddenly empty by nightfall. Why choose to represent objects versus people? The reason I don't have any people in the paintings is because they're not about any one person's experience. I don't divulge stories about individual students because those aren't my stories to tell. That's their life. When you work with 100 to 200 people every year and get to know them and care about them as individuals, and then never see them again, you tend to take a more systematic view of things as a self-protective measure. Public school is a huge system, but it's a system designed for people. That's the reason it exists. As a societal democracy building project – though societal democracy building is not for individual people – I still think it's worth doing. Clare's work on display at Kasmin Gallery during SUMMER SCHOOL in 2023 You have two Master's degrees, an MA in Art Education from NYU and an MFA in Painting from Yale. Did you enjoy your higher education experience? The Art Education program felt like an extension of college. I really enjoyed it, but it was mostly a means to an end of getting a job. I was actually considering going into interaction design at the time, but I ended up choosing arts education because I didn't want to work for clients that I didn't care about. The program itself was heavy on theory and not too much on the practical side. It worked out because theory is ultimately more grounding in the classroom anyway, because you’re learning in practice over time. In order to take a leave of absence from teaching and do something for myself, I needed to be in an academic program, so that’s why I did the MFA program at Yale. I went into it thinking that I wanted to develop as an artist, take time to focus on myself, and grow as a person. Once I got to Yale, everyone's like, "I want to be a fancy artist." I didn’t think of myself as an artist at the time. I always say that I don’t have the personality for it! How did you develop as an artist during your CMA residency? The thing I had to work on most was structuring my day-to-day since I wasn’t teaching full-time. This was my first full-time “artist” job. It was a wonderful challenge that I don’t know that I fully met. My biggest challenge was setting goals for the larger works. I ended up making a lot more abstractions than larger paintings, even though once I start one of these larger paintings, I really, really get into it and end up painting all day. Clare in her studio at Children's Museum of the Arts Are there other artists that focus on education in their work? They’re rare. There are some artists who make work about institutions in general that also make work about schools. Hugh Hayden comes to mind. He did a project called Brier Patch in Madison Square Park with school chairs. I really enjoy Sable Elyse Smith ’s work about prisons . There was a show at Smack Mellon when I was in grad school about segregation and education called Race and Revolution: Still Separate – Still Unequal . I hope the artists in that show are still making work about education. Clare’s Reading List The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession Dana Goldstein A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire Tinkering Towards Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform David B. Tyack and Larry Cuban Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner Vivian Gussin Paley Teaching to Transgress bell hooks Are Prisons Obsolete? Angela Davis The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy David Graeber Tennis Anatomy E. Paul Retest and Mark Kovacs Interview and photography by Kerry Santullo for Children's Museum of the Arts NEXT Emergency Exhibition: New Training for Future Artists and Art Lovers Take a Virtual Tour on Bloomberg Connects Donate Now

Sidewalk Art Party Celebrating Tomashi Jackson's New Collaborative Mural Free Community Artmaking Friday, March 18, 2022 4 PM to 6 PM Restorative Ground 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY, USA Media Inquiries: adam@culturalcounsel.com RSVP You are cordially invited to the unveiling of Moon Folk: Passages Toward Greater Understanding , a new mural by Tomashi Jackson in collaboration with NYC children artists. We will meet at St. John's Terminal at 550 Washington Street at 4 PM for an exhibition walkthrough with Tomashi. Next, we'll gather around the corner at Restorative Ground at 345 Hudson Street for a sparkling cider toast and mural-making party with CMA's Artists in Residence . Programs at Children's Museum of the Arts are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Donate Now

Little Artists: Selects from CMA's Permanent Collection Curated by Justin Teodoro Exhibition Thursday, July 7, 2022 All Day Ace Hotel Brooklyn 252 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY, USA Media Inquiries: adam@culturalcounsel.com RSVP Installation View Rachel Yoes Different 9/11 Collection New York, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Lucy Menga Portrait of Miss Dunn Age 12 Queensboro Community Art Center Queens, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Gladys Fernandez My Dog Grade 8 Lavelle School for the Blind Bronx, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Unknown Artist ca. 1938 Joseph Solman Collection, USA Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Halimah Kennedy We All Stick Together Age 12 St. Agatha Home for Children, PS 17X Bronx, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Gerald Repp Street Scene Age 11 Kuniyoshi Collection Queensboro Community Art Center Queens, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Witty Huang Age 8 Relax Ourselves Evergreen Art Studio Fremont, CA Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Tina Steffanatos Age 5 1/2 Rainbow Over Ulster County St. Agatha Home for Children, PS 17X Bronx, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Maria Ingiotti WPA-Kuniyoshi Collection Greenwich House Workshop New York, NY Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Jean Pultz Age 9 USA Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Chen Ruei Celebration of Harvest Age 4 Chendu Kindergarten China Permanent Collection, Children's Museum of the Arts Children’s Museum of the Arts is pleased to present selected works from its permanent collection curated by artist, illustrator, and designer Justin Teodoro in the Gallery at Ace Hotel Brooklyn located at 252 Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The installation will be on view to the public from July 7 to September 29, 2022. “I’ve always been struck by Keith Haring ’s famous quote, “Children know something that most people have forgotten ," said Teodoro. "When Children’s Museum of the Arts approached me about this special opportunity I knew I wanted to tap into that free spirit that’s present in each and every work in their permanent collection of over 2,000 artworks created by children over the last century.” The presentation will include an intimate selection of artworks that aspires to encourage the public to rediscover their love and joy in making art without judgment. Programs at Children's Museum of the Arts are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Donate Now

Pablo Helguera Artist, Writer, Educator Donate Now Since 1988

See More Children's Museum of the Arts 10/5/23 Interviews "I'll never forget this feeling of wanting to draw everything in my world forever." Artist Daniel Graham Loxton on seeing Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks for the first time. NEXT IN

Open Studio [April 27] Free Community Artmaking Thursday, April 27, 2023 3 PM to 5 PM Pier 57 Pier 57, 11th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Media Inquiries: adam@culturalcounsel.com RSVP Open Studio invites children to explore hands-on projects across a wide range of artistic disciplines. Each month, CMA artists will bring special programming geared for children while caregivers are welcome to enjoy the extraordinary setting of Pier 57 in the adjacent Family Living Room. This program is recommended for children ages 7-11. Registation opens each Friday for the following week's classes. Children's Museum of the Arts' Open Studio at Pier 57 is generously supported by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, William Talbott Hillman Foundation, First Republic Bank, The LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Google Community Grants Fund, Amazon, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Harriet Ames Charitable Trust, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Hammitt, and the Viniar Family Foundation. Donate Now

12/31/23 Artists in Schools Maria's Reflections: December CMA Resident Artist Maria D. Rapicavoli on her December projects at Hudson Guild. Click to expand media gallery. December was all about the foundations of two-dimensional design and different materials and media, including oil pastels, mosaic tiles, metal wire, and even vegetables! By the end of the month, we transitioned into three-dimensional design. We started the month learning about the life and work of fellow New Yorker Jean-Michel Basquiat . Students drew their names or initials, street art style. I was surprised to see how the students quickly responded to my invitation to use graffiti to express their feelings, and many of them promptly shared their emotions. Students really enjoy using art to way to say something out loud without being judged. Next, we embarked on our big mosaic project. First, we learned about artists Alma Thomas and Sam Gilliam and historical examples of ancient Roman and Sicilian mosaics. The project was split into three phases: (1) drawing the work on paper (2) gluing on colored glass tiles (3) grouting the mosaic. The results were exquisite. This was the first time that we worked on the same project for multiple days. It was challenging for many reasons: first, the lack of continuity prevented many of them from finishing the project; and second, because of their excessive self-criticism, some students contemplated starting the project over several times. Not everyone could quickly grasp the process of sketching, gluing, and grouting due to the challenge of accurately filling the original sketch with tiny colored glass, leading to some frustration. For those who managed to finish the work, it was a great success. The students loved using grouting to fill the gaps between the small tiles, and they were delighted with making a work that looked more permanent and durable than a drawing. They loved to experiment with new materials, work on composition, and improve their attention to detail. This was the first step to learning to navigate a step-by-step process that demanded both time and patience. By the end of the project, students understood the importance of consistency. Our final two-dimensional design class was an hit – vegetable printing! Students had fun cutting and carving vegetables to use them as stamps. It was a very fun and messy activity and perfect for getting in the pre-holiday mood! I initially thought the project would be a disaster because some students could not stand the smell of onions or garlic, and their first reaction was disgust. However, in the end, they all enjoyed the activity and the outcome was extremely positive. To transition to our first three-dimensional design lesson, I invited the kids to "draw in the air" just as Alexander Calder did with his mobile sculptures. After learning about kinetic art and studying examples of Calder’s abstract sculptures, students experimented with balance, equilibrium, and lightness by creating a "mobile" sculpture that moves when the wind blows. I was happily surprised to discover the kid's extraordinary ability to work with metal wires and create fantastic three-dimensional forms. I have many memorable moments from this month's lessons ... A nice moment was when a student recognized Basquiat's dinosaur and exclaimed, "Oh, so that's the artist who made it!" Kids also enjoyed oil pastels because they are softer than crayons, can be blended in, layered, and mixed, and they are very bright. The result was excellent; some students finished two or three projects in one day. Another nice moment was when I introduced them to the mosaic technique. They loved the tiny bits of colored glass, especially second and third graders. They considered it a precious material and showed great enthusiasm for the new medium! Maria's work at Hudson Guild is supported by the Emergency Arts Education Fund , which provides free arts education to NYC school communities whose art programs have been decimated by recent budget cuts. Children’s Museum of the Arts’ three Residents Artists are currently implementing ambitious arts curriculum at each of our partner sites throughout New York City: Hudson Guild in Chelsea, Sid Miller Academy in Crown Heights, and Children’s Workshop School in the East Village. Come spring, our residents will showcase their students' work through exhibitions and installations across the city. Learn how you can support the work of our residents here . NEXT Emergency Exhibition: New Training for Future Artists and Art Lovers Take a Virtual Tour on Bloomberg Connects Donate Now

10/5/23 Interviews "Just like authors read all their peers and those that came before them, artists need to consume imagery." Artist Leslie Weissman on her first studio visit...in fifth grade! Click to expand media gallery. Great artists make artists. And to prove that point, over 70 of today's greatest have contributed their work in support of Children's Museum of the Arts' Emergency Arts Education Fund , establishing utterly ambitious art programs in New York City schools that need them most. Bidding for the online auction concludes Thursday, October 19 at 12 PM EDT . Bid now. Bid often. Bid here. Below, meet auction artist Leslie Weissman . Leslie as a young artist Leslie's childhood artwork Artwork by Leslie's son Do you have a favorite memory of making art as a child? I started painting in an artist's basement when I was in elementary school. It was set up like a professional studio. She gave weekly art lessons. I painted in oils as a kid – my brother and parents still have some of the paintings I made hanging in their homes! What advice would you give to young artists who wish to pursue an art practice? Paint, sketch, and draw as much as possible and read about art and philosophy to help develop your foundation. Go to museums and galleries…just like authors read all their peers and those that came before them, artists need to consume imagery. How does working with children inspire you? Uncomplicated and unbiased creativity – the more we know and think, we overthink and over-engineer and lose the sense of immediacy and the organic intimacy with our creativity. When did you first know you were going to be an artist? As early as my memory of thoughts started, so maybe first grade. Can you describe a formative experience visiting a museum or gallery? My best memory was visiting George Segal at his home and studio with Ronald Feldman with my fifth grade art class. We did a segment on making pop art and the Feldmans were my classmates' parents and arranged for the visit. My first studio visit was as a fifth grader…amazing! Leslie Weissman Upward and intertwined spray paint, acrylic, oil on linen Bid Now NEXT Emergency Exhibition: New Training for Future Artists and Art Lovers Take a Virtual Tour on Bloomberg Connects Donate Now

6/4/24 Kids Art 4 Dinosaurs from CMA's Collection of Children's Art Click to expand media gallery. Arif Rioz Fantasy Age 11 International School of Choueifat Damascus, Syria Samya Al Busaidy Dinosaur Age 7 The Sultan's School Seeb, Oman Jonathan Marin Age 8 Lavelle School for the Blind Bronx, NY Heron Mochny Life Age 11 American Embassy School New Delhi, India NEXT Emergency Exhibition: New Training for Future Artists and Art Lovers Take a Virtual Tour on Bloomberg Connects Donate Now