Creative Communities: Selected Works from 15 Years of Grantee Exhibitions
Date
October 6, 2024The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund aims to increase access and opportunity for all New Yorkers and foster healthy and vibrant communities. The fund uses an equity lens to develop initiatives and to issue grants, driven by the principle that everyone should have access to positive and enriching opportunities that define a full range of human experience and that circumstances of birth should not limit choices or short circuit success for anyone.
The Illumination Fund’s office showcases mission-aligned art and hosts special exhibitions organized by its grantees. This current exhibition features the work of 15 organizations who have presented shows over the past 15 years. Collectively the works express the Illumination Fund’s three guiding hallmarks: “Firing Imagination | Sparking Opportunity | Strengthening Community.”
The following inspirational organizations, represented here through artworks and documentation, include: Aperture, Artis, Artistic Noise, Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Common Threads Project, Creative Time, DreamYard, Fountain House Gallery, Frédéric Brenner (This Place), Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Studio Museum in Harlem, The Bronx Museum, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The exhibition was organized by Manon Slome, co-founder, No Longer Empty and author of No Longer Empty: Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces.
Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society. Aperture will move to a new, permanent home at 380 Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side in 2025.
THE NYC GREEN CART PHOTOGRAPHY COMMISSION
In 2009, Aperture commissioned photographers LaToya Ruby Frazier, Thomas Holton, Gabriele Stabile, Will Steacy, and Shen Wei to document the NYC Green Cart program, which brings affordable fresh fruit and vegetables to under-served neighborhoods with high rates of diet-related diseases and little access to fresh produce. The Green Cart program, administered by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in a public-private partnership with the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, still in operation, offers healthy food to local residents and promotes business ownership for its vendors, many of whom are recent immigrants.
Each photographer had a distinct approach to the subject matter that ranged from depicting the personal lives of the vendors, to highlighting the ways in which community members prepare the produce. Will Steacy depicted the urban landscapes surrounding the Green Carts—the streets, sidewalks, and buildings, the fast-food restaurants, bodegas and markets, revealing, without shying away from, the reality of challenging living conditions. LaToya Ruby Frazier set out to document encounters with the Green Carts’ owners, workers, and customers.
A large-scale exhibition of this work, Moveable Feast: Fresh Produce and the NYC Green Cart program, was on view at Museum of the City of New York in 2011. The NYC Green Cart Photography Commission was made possible by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
See highlights from Aperture’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Works from the NYC Green Cart Photography Commission (May 2010 – September 2011)
Visit: Aperture
Artis
Artis is an independent art organization dedicated to supporting contemporary artists from Israel whose work explores aesthetic, social, and political questions to inspire reflection and debate. Based in New York City, Artis’ work is motivated by a belief that artists generate transformative experiences and ideas that are essential to culture and to engagement with our world today. Operating in a charged context, Artis strives to move beyond replicating national language, assumptions, or preconceived notions in a manner that is responsive, responsible, and in exchange with the international art community. They work with artists who ask questions and explore complex and diverse narratives, histories, and experiences in thoughtful, new ways.
As a grant-maker, Artis works internationally with museums and art institutions to support exhibitions, residencies, innovative projects, and research about contemporary artists from Israel. Artis works with artists directly through residency grants and supports the presentation of their work through exhibition and acquisition grants. Artis develops platforms and builds networks for art professionals through curatorial programs, including curatorial seminars in Israel, workshops, and symposia that share knowledge about art practices and discourse in Israel.
Artis provided a Residency Grant for artist Noa Yekutieli’s residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY between the fall of 2022 and the winter of 2023 and an Exhibition Grant to support her solo show, Noa Yekutieli: No Longer — Not Yet, at the ISCP in 2024. Noa Yekutieli is a self-taught American-Japanese-Israeli artist currently based between Los Angeles and New York.
See highlights from Artis’ exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Brave New World (October 2011 – March 2012)
Visit: Artis
Artistic Noise
Artistic Noise builds community with system-impacted young people to enhance lives through the empowering and therapeutic potential of art making. For over 23 years, they have explored the power of artistic practice together with thousands of young people who are incarcerated, on probation, in foster care, or otherwise involved with the juvenile court system. Through visual art programs, alternatives to incarceration projects, and art therapy-based initiatives, participants give voice to their personal experiences, build new communities of support, and explore a variety of valuable life skills in the process. Artistic Noise programming creates safe and brave spaces where court-involved and vulnerable young people can be seen, heard, and supported alongside their pathways into adulthood. Artistic Noise is motivated by the belief that it is a healing and empowering experience for young people to claim their own narratives rather than relying on others to tell their stories on their behalf.
Artistic Noise has definitely done a lot to change how I view myself and the world. When I first came into the program as a youth, I was coming directly out of Rikers Island into the AN program. I really didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. The program showed me that there’s hope for me in the sense that I could use my artistic talent to make my way in the world, and that’s all I needed.
—Artistic Noise Alumni Participant
The artwork in Artistic Noise’s exhibition section was created by a cohort of 14–22-year-old participants from this year’s Art & Entrepreneurship program. Held twice a week in the Harlem storefront studio, the Art & Entrepreneurship initiative brings a dedicated group of young people into contact with a community of art therapists and teaching artists, many of whom have come through the programs as young people. Utilizing the aesthetics of altars as a starting point for this project, participants delved into ideas about how surface perceptions can oftentimes differ from the inner realities of a person, place, system, or structure. In weekly conversations and artmaking workshops, the group explored the idea that the way we are seen by society isn’t always aligned with the ways we feel inside. Final artworks called attention to issues connected with stereotyping, racism, immigration, the NYC school system, court systems, mental health-based issues, self-esteem, and over-policing.
Because I’m a mom, I haven’t been able to sit down and engage with art the way I wanted to. What inspires me to create are the moments where I feel very isolated. When I feel really isolated, those are the moments where instead of putting myself into a stressful situation, I use art instead.
—Artistic Noise Current Participant
See highlights from Artistic Noise’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Art, Entrepreneurship and Curatorial Program (May 2010 – September 2011)
Visit: Artistic Noise
Bronx Museum of the Arts
The Bronx Museum’s AIM (Artist in the Marketplace) Fellowship is a career accelerator program designed to give promising emerging artists based in New York City the knowledge and skills needed to sustain a successful practice and build a supportive creative community. Since 1980, The Bronx Museum has championed a diverse roster of over 1,200 artists through this program, helping them to navigate the opaque professional practices of the art world. Artists accepted to the Fellowship through a competitive open call are mentored by a distinguished faculty of industry experts and engage in a nine-month-long series of intensive seminars covering topics including finance, law, media management, and writing, among others.
Beginning in 2024, the Fellowship culminates in a free public professional development event for artists at the Museum designed and co-facilitated by the AIM Cohort. Through this event, the Fellows have the opportunity to share valuable knowledge and skills they gained from the AIM program with a wider community of artists and creatives—thereby establishing them as thought leaders in the field. Historically, the Museum has also uplifted AIM Fellows through a biennial exhibition showcasing their artwork.
The earlier exhibition held at LMTIF from 2015 to 2016 was AIM – 35 years, which was specially developed to feature a selection of artworks by AIM alumni, and it showcases the Museum’s commitment to the fostering and championing of artists’ work. This year’s exhibition features work by AIM alumna Abigail DeVille, who completed the program in 2012 and exhibited work in Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial in 2013. In 2022, The Bronx Museum organized the artist’s first museum survey, Bronx Heavens, which traveled to Bowdoin College Museum of Art in 2024. With a humanizing lens, DeVille’s work utilizes found materials and detritus to unearth forgotten narratives of communities of color.
DeVille continues to engage with The Bronx Museum including meeting participants in The Bronx Museum’s Teen Council—a paid internship program where NYC teens learn art-making skills and engage with the museum space. DeVille discussed Bronx Heavens and her experience in the art world, which inspired the teens’ own artmaking, and DeVille led a seminar for the AIM Fellowship.
For over five decades, The Bronx Museum has been a vanguard of cultural diversity and accessibility in the contemporary art world. The Museum offers 100% free admission for everyone to all its exhibitions and programs, providing a vital creative outlet to the public from all over New York City and the world. Through its curatorial practices, the Museum seeks to uplift and champion artists who have been historically marginalized. The Bronx Museum continues to be a leader in the cultural sphere by committing to accessibility, platforming underrepresented artists, and producing dynamic community-engaged programming.
See highlights from The Bronx Museum’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: AIM – 35 Years (July 2015 – February 2016)
Visit: The Bronx Museum
Center for Urban Pedagogy
Center for Urban Pedagogy’s (CUP) mission is to use the power of art and design to increase meaningful civic engagement, in partnership with marginalized communities.
In their Community Education programs, they collaborate with community organizations to combine resources and advocate for just and equitable public policies and systems. Together, as in the samples exhibited here, they create educational materials through workshops and projects that explain complex urban and civic policies.
Through their Youth Education programs, CUP partners with public high schools in New York City to create in-class and after school civic education arts programs for their teen students. While in their Field Building fellowships and trainings, they support designers, artists, and civic workers to develop community-engaged design practices that center the power, well-being, and vision of the communities with whom they work.
Displayed here are a selection of the brochures and posters from CUP’s Community Education projects:
Building our City Budget (2023): A guide that explains how New Yorkers can advocate for change for their communities through New York City’s annual budget process. Created with Teachers Unite and designer Noah Jodice.
We Know What We Need Where We Live (2022): A guide that explains how communities can get involved and ask for things that they need when federal funding comes to their area. Created with PUSH Buffalo and design collective Micrópolis.
Healthcare is for You! (2022): A guide supporting immigrant and/or transgender, gender non-conforming, or non-binary New Yorkers to enroll in health insurance. Created with New York Lawyers for Public Interest and designer Graydon Manzke.
Stories + Data = Power (2023): A guide about how BIPOC New Yorkers can use data to organize for neighborhood change using NYC government’s Equitable Development tools and Data Explorer (EDDE). Created with the Racial Impact Study Coalition (RISC) and designers Arthur Kim and Jonathan Muroya.
See highlights from CUP’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Who Decides? (March 2017 – May 2017)
Visit: Center for Urban Pedagogy
Children’s Museum of Manhattan
The Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) is a steward of early childhood, helping all children grow and develop into their best selves. Through extensive programs on-site, online, and around the five boroughs, CMOM nurtures the next generation of creative global citizens as they learn through exploration and play. CMOM encourages empathy across difference by elevating and providing insight into diverse perspectives and inviting visitors of all backgrounds to join our intentionally welcoming community and create and learn alongside each other. The museum’s programs reflect the rich cultural diversity, energy, and resilience of New York City itself and have a special focus on ensuring that its offerings are available to those families who might not otherwise have access to the Museum.
Founded in 1973 as a neighborhood organization, CMOM has grown over the years into a beloved destination and resource for children, families, and educators from across the five boroughs and from around the world. The museum welcomes 350,000 visitors each year to its Upper West Side location and engages hundreds of thousands more through its outreach programs in partnership with schools, libraries, shelters, and Head Start centers through-out New York City.
The Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s Family Connections program in partnership with the NYC Department of Correction, is a national model, designed to support families experiencing the traumatic impact of parental incarceration, by creating experiences at the Museum and at Rikers for healthy bonding, learning, and connection.
See highlights from CMOM’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund featuring the Program for Families in Temporary Housing (January 2008 – April 2009)
Common Threads Project
Common Threads Project helps individuals and communities heal from the enduring psychological effects of sexual and gender-based violence through a unique trauma healing methodology that combines neuroscience and art. They build local capacity for trauma healing through partnerships and training, and furthering the field of trauma therapy through research and evidence. In many diverse cultures, women have come together to sew their unspeak- able stories onto cloth. Common Threads’ approach blends this tradition with evidence-based trauma therapy, including psycho-education, somatic work, coping skills, and art therapy activities. The sewing circle provides mutual support, emotional safety, and enables the complex work of trauma recovery. Participants are able to disclose atrocities, and share their experi- ences of survival. They build community, and reclaim their futures.
Common Threads Project began in 2012 in collaboration with the Federación de Mujeres de Sucumbíos in Ecuador. Since then, this trauma healing methodology has been brought to Nepal, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the US, and Nigeria. In 2022, with the support of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund through the Fund’s Arts in Health initiative, Common Threads Project has been brought to diverse refugee communities in New York.
See highlights from Common Threads Projects’ exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Stitch By Stitch: The Fabric of Healing (March 13, 2023 – September 2023)
Visit: Common Threads Project
Creative Time
For 50 years, Creative Time has produced “Art that Meets the Moment,” contributing to the art and social movements that define each era. Creative Time has deep roots in the cultural fabric of New York City, producing over 350 projects by over 2000 artists in the city, many of which — for a time — literally transformed the city’s landscape, or established new formats for the public to engage on critical issues. Many projects, such as Kara Walker’s A Subtlety… (2014) sugar sphinx, Nick Cave’s Heard NYC (2013) in Grand Central, Paul Chan’s post-Katrina Waiting For Godot in New Orleans (2007), Jill Magid’s Tender (2020) pennies, and Gran Fury’s Kissing Doesn’t Kill… (1989), have taken on an almost mythic quality, as ethereal works that existed for and in response to a particular moment. Others, such as Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda’s Tribute in Light (2002) to 9/11, have become monumental installations and dedicated markers of time.
In true Creative Time fashion, they present here a collaborative reflection on these defining moments selected by current and former Creative Time directors and curators, examining a half-century archive of artworks, ephemera, texts, first hand narratives, photographs, video, and multimedia works. This site-specific display proves a holistic survey of a half-century- long creative outlet for artists engaged in revolutionary, groundbreaking work.
See highlights from Creative Time’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Because Dreaming is Best Done in Public: Creative Time in Public Spaces (March 2012 – September 2012)
Visit: Creative Time
DreamYard
DreamYard is an arts and social justice organization dedicated to working with Bronx youth, families, and schools to build pathways toward equity and opportunity. DreamYard provides nationally recognized, transformative arts and social justice education programming to Bronx youth and young adults in schools, after school and during the summer months, and supports them as they work toward higher learning, creative-filled careers, and social action.
DreamYard aspires for everyone — staff, board, parents, youth, teaching artists, school partners, alumni, and neighbors — to have the power, agency, and tools to fortify themselves and the communities they love. They utilize the humanitarian power of arts and social justice education to build thriving and just communities in the Bronx and beyond. They are committed to nurturing artists, communities, and dreamers to change the world.
See highlights from DreamYard’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: The Bronx is Being… (Nov 2017 – Aug 2018)
Visit: DreamYard
Fountain House Gallery and Studio
Fountain House Gallery and Studio supports the careers and creative visions of contemporary artists living with mental illness. Founded by Fountain House in 2000, the Fountain House Gallery sells original artworks and collaborates with a wide network of artists, curators and cultural institutions. The Fountain House Studio, located in Long Island City, is a collaborative workspace that furthers the professional practice of participating artists. Embracing artists who are emerging or established, trained or self-taught, Fountain House Gallery cultivates artistic growth, makes a vital contribution to the New York arts community, and challenges the stigma surrounding mental illness.
All Fountain House Gallery & Studio artists are members of Fountain House, a national mental health nonprofit working to improve health, increase opportunity, and end social and economic isolation for people most impacted by mental illness. Fountain House began in the 1940s with a group of people in a New York State Hospital who decided to serve their own recovery by working to help each other and themselves. This “club” continued after their return to New York City and, in 1948, led to the purchase of a building in Hell’s Kitchen to serve as the first “Clubhouse,” Fountain House’s term for its treatment spaces. From the beginning, Fountain House has operated in sharp contrast to a mental health care system narrowly focused on diagnosing pathology and suppressing the symptoms of passive patients with serious mental illness.
See highlights from Fountain House Gallery’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Fountain Gallery A Selection of Works (November 2009 – May 2010)
Visit: Fountain House Gallery
Frédéric Brenner
This Place
The result of nearly a decade of work initiated by Frédéric Brenner in 2006, This Place explored the complexity of Israel and the West Bank, as place and metaphor, through the eyes of twelve internationally acclaimed photographers who each spent approximately six months in residence there. Their highly individualized works combined to create not a single, monolithic vision, but rather a diverse and fragmented portrait, alive to all the rifts and paradoxes of this important and much contested space.
The participants were artist-photographers selected for the quality of their work and their commitment to honest, passionate exploration. These twelve photographers included Wendy Ewald, Martin Kollar, Josef Koudelka, Jungjin Lee, Gilles Peress, Fazal Sheikh, Stephen Shore, Rosalind Solomon, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall, Nick Waplington, and Frédéric Brenner, who was also the artistic director. Together, this group represent- ed one of the most original and distinguished collections of artists ever to collaborate on a project and it was certainly the most acclaimed group of photographers ever to turn their attention to Israel. Select images from the project can be seen on the slideshow accompanying this exhibition.
Frédéric Brenner’s own contribution to the project, An Archeology of Fear and Desire, was an attempt to re-contextualize Israel as place and metaphor, exploring longing, belonging and exclusion. This Place is a visual essay about a land of devouring myths in which constructs — social and religious — perpetuate a tyranny of roles, which render us strangers to what is most intimate in ourselves. In his photographic journey, spanning more than four decades and more than 45 countries, Frédéric Brenner has investigated the multiple expressions of life in Jewish diaspora, from Rome to New York, India to Yemen, Morocco to Ethiopia, Sarajevo to Samarkand. His archive is a com- prehensive visual record of the Jewish people from the late 20th into the 21st century. It features contemporary debates and challenges of individual and collective identities and narratives not only concerning Jewish life, but also beyond. Shifting between documentary and artistic works, it involves over 100,000 black-and-white and color negatives, 8,000 contact sheets, color transparencies, fine art prints, interviews, and paper-based diaries. Brenner’s lifetime of work is now being digitized and catalogued in order to create a dynamic, searchable and educational archive. The archive project will not only preserve tens of thousands of images, film negatives and written notes, it will be the foundation of a new way of learning about the Jewish experience and global Jewish diaspora. The collection shows the multifaceted “ways” of being Jewish in a manner that illuminates the beauty of diversity that weaves across a uniting thread of shared history. The Frédéric Brenner Archive will become a special collection at the National Library of Israel, where it will be openly available to future generations.
See highlights from Frédéric Brenner’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: This Place: Prints from the Archives (February 2016 – July 2016)
Read about This Place: The Jewish Museum Berlin
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
The Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan is a cornerstone of Jewish community life, dedicated to fostering an environment where everyone can connect, grow, and learn within a vibrant and diverse Jewish landscape. Guided by its mission, the JCC is a professional beacon of inclusivity and innovation, re- defining contemporary Jewish living. It offers a broad spectrum of programs designed to nurture physical, intellectual, and spiritual well-being, ensuring each and every member can reach their full potential. With a commitment to accessibility and a deep connection to Israel, the JCC integrates the nation’s rich history and culture into its diverse offerings. As a model of communal responsibility and cultural pride, it supports a fairer world through meaningful actions and shared values.
The Laurie M. Tisch Gallery at the JCC complements this mission by curating year-round exhibitions of contemporary work from local and international artists. These thought-provoking displays invite the public to engage in meaningful conversation and reflection, reinforcing the JCC’s commitment to high-quality, educational, and inspiring arts and cultural programming.
See highlights from JCC Manhattan’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Intersections: Art and Community at the JCC in Manhattan (November 2012 – May 2013)
No Longer Empty
No Longer Empty: Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces (published 2023)
by Manon Slome
No Longer Empty, which operated in the five boroughs of New York City from 2008–2020, sought to activate public engagement with contemporary art through curated, community-responsive exhibitions and education programs in unique spaces outside of the institutional framework.
The book No Longer Empty: Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces discusses the evolution of No Longer Empty in creating democratic access to art through site- and community-responsive exhibitions and radical educational programming. The book argues that the more accessible the space of cultural production, the greater the diversity of potential audiences and civic exchange.
Essays by six key participants trace the evolution of the organization’s highly innovative curatorial and educational strategies from a variety of perspectives. They are accompanied by case studies of selected exhibitions, short accounts by a host of artists and educators, and documents that point the way for others who seek to create similar projects.
Amply illustrated with photographs of artworks and events, the book aims to inspire the next generations of makers and agents of change—curators, artists, community organizers, educators—to take cultural production and the power of art into their own hands and into their own communities.
See highlights from No Longer Empty’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: A Glimpse into This Side of Paradise (May 2014 – January 2015)
Visit: No Longer Empty
and read the book, No Longer Empty: Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces
Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is the nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally and for work that has been inspired and influenced by Black culture. It is a site for the dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society. The program, Expanding the Walls: Making Connections Between Photography, History and Community, is a free, eight-month photography-based program for a select group of students enrolled in high school or GED program in New York City to learn about photography, history and community through workshops, gallery visits, and discussions led by contemporary artists. For over twenty years, the archive of Harlem photographer James Van Der Zee (1886–1983) has been central to the program as formal inspiration. Over the course of the program, the participants also engage with the work of photographers such as Dawoud Bey, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Texas Isaiah, Carrie Mae Weems, and Ming Smith. These artists, alongside Van Der Zee, provide a rich intergenerational dialogue in which the teenagers can situate their work and practices. Participants receive trans- portation fare to and from the Museum and a stipend upon their completion of the program. Additionally, each student is awarded a digital camera upon completion of the program, which culminates with an exhibition of their work for an entire exhibition season.
The works on display here are from Between matter and memory: Expanding the Walls 2023 and features work by the fifteen artists in the 2023 cohort and considers how photographs can be used to process the gap between physical experiences and intangible recollections of the world. Provoked in part by the ending of Covid-19 as a public health emergency, the artists explored New York City as it is lived and remembered now. Whether depicting the solace of waking moments or the joy of neighbors, these photographs manifest the desire to hold onto a point in time. Reckoning with the inaccuracy of memory, these artists use the space between the certainty of the present and the instability of nostalgia as an aperture onto the world.
Between matter and memory: Expanding the Walls 2023 was organized by Amber Edmond and Sheldon Gooch, Curatorial Fellows; with Ally Caple, Expanding the Walls Coordinator, and the Expanding the Walls 2023 participants including: Rouguiatou Diallo, Soraya Fuentes, Yaniel Garcia, Mia Hinds, Daisy Lopez, Anindita Mandal, Diego Mejia, Brianna Mojica, Seira Reyes, Axel Sambula, Ruben Lopez Suarez, Weng Rui Tong, Josiah Utak, Reyli Veras and Gael Vielma.
See highlights from the Studio Museum’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Expanding the Walls (June 2017 – October 2017)
Visit: Studio Museum in Harlem
The Tang Teaching Museum
Tang Museum educators visit Saratoga Springs High School and showcase revolutionary prints by Corita Kent
The Tang Teaching Museum is a cultural anchor of New York’s Capital Region and a distinctive town square for Skidmore College. The Tang organizes more than 200 free public events each year to introduce contemporary art and ideas to new audiences through artist talks, lectures, concerts, films, workshops, and the popular Family Saturdays series, in which art on view catalyzes discussions and art-making activities. The Tang also serves thou- sands of K-12 students by bringing programs to rural, suburban, and urban schools, libraries, and community centers across the region. The Tang’s encyclopedic collection of over 18,000 objects serves as a primary source teaching tool for all ages.
The work of pioneering pop printmaker, Corita Kent, is a great example of how art can be a prompt for innovative and unique teaching. Njeri Jennings, Laurie M. Tisch Educator for K-12 and Community Programs, and Mia Etkin ’26, Tang Education Intern, visited Saratoga Springs High School to work with six English classes, and brought a selection of work by Corita.
One class focused on civic engagement, exploring ways students could get involved in their local government and community. The education team presented art by Corita Kent and led an art-making project which invited students to talk about finding their own voices through art.
Another class worked on writing persuasive essays in response to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” They learned about ethos, logos, and pathos, and argumentation in art. The class made Corita-inspired posters and discussed how Corita incorporated images from current events, popular culture, philosophy, and advertising to create artwork with anti-war messages.
Mia Etkin ’26, a Studio Art major at Skidmore College studying art education, was responsible for leading the students through their art-making project. Her experience reveals how the Tang Museum makes unique pre-professional training possible for college students while offering transformative art education opportunities for the region.
See highlights from the Tang Teaching Museum’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: I was a double (February 2015 – June 2015)
Visit: Tang Teaching Museum
Whitney Museum of American Art
Youth Insights Artists
Youth Insights (YI) Artists brings teens together with contemporary artists and Museum staff, providing opportunities to work collaboratively, discuss art critically, think creatively, and make artwork inspired by this exchange.
In the spring of 2024, YI Artists worked with Whitney Biennial artist Nyala Moon. Throughout the class, participants explored their identities and passions through filmmaking. They learned about directing, storytelling, messaging, editing, scale, troubleshooting, and sound editing. Additionally, they learned how to critique and review various films, including classical narrative, experimental, and documentary. Collaborating with a peer or working independently, YI Artists created a film that is a culmination of all these styles.
See highlights from the Whitney Museum’s exhibition at the Illumination Fund: Am I As Much As Being Seen?”: A Project by Whitney Youth Insight Teens and Artist Fred Wilson (April 2013 – October 2013)