Friday, July 25, 2008

Grand opening for our table top exhibits



Our table top display

The museum table top exhibit yesterday was, beyond compare, my best experience in graduate school so far. I think I needed to struggle through the other classes to have this class mean as much as it did. All my previous learning seemed to converge and come together in this class. Even though I got very little sleep on Wednesday night, I was not anxious and stressed. I was busy thinking of how I was going to put things together or sewing, sewing, sewing. I was creatively, completely, happily submerged in the experience. Having objects I created next to museum objects was thrilling. For me, the exhibit was an embodied experience with art.


I have never before experienced the level of collaboration achieved on this project. Our small exhibit group collaborated. Fellow classmates collaborated. Our museum liaison collaborated with abandon. Our professor models collaboration. The director of the lending collection collaborated. Interns and museum staff collaborated. I think we defined ideal collaboration during this process.



Our exhibit's concept, "Pieces and the Whole" can be used throughout the year in all the classes I teach. I believe I am beginning to understand how to write an essential question. Could it be that for me, these confusing pieces are starting to come together to make the whole?

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Cross-stitch stars will be made into Christmas ornaments. Design is from an old Norwegian pattern.