Partners: Boise Art Museum Education Department; Riverstone International School
Educators: Jay Nelson, Art Teacher, Riverstone International School; Terra Feast, Curator of Education, Boise Art Museum; Lucas Sheetz, Associate Curator of Education, Boise Art Museum; Two docents from Boise Art Museum’s School Tour Docent Program
Location: Boise, ID
Corinne Ide, 5th Grade Macallan Webster, 5th Grade
Through the Window , 2014 The Great Adventure, 2014
Block printing ink on paper Watercolor pencils on paper
Darci DiAngelis, 5th Grade
La Boca de Vida, 2014
Watercolor pencils and collage on paper
Throughout the school year, more than 8,000 students and their teachers experience a school tour at the Boise Art Museum through the Free School Tour Program, a vital resource for educators in the Boise community. Trained docents lead students through interactive discussions about the work on display in the galleries, followed by a hands-on art activity in the museum’s education studios that reinforces concepts discussed in the tour. Each year, these multi-disciplinary school tours feature themes from the changing exhibitions and the museum’s permanent collection, addressing a spectrum of historical periods, artistic media, and styles. For this project, fifth grade students from Riverstone International School analyzed puns, idioms, metaphors, and similes based on artwork in the exhibition, “A Matter of Taste: Food for Thought.” Back in their classroom, students discussed the concepts introduced on the tour, created new work inspired by their experiences, and wrote statements to correspond with their artworks.