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art

A Beginner’s Guide to Art Class

I am an artist-educator actively involved in making socially-engaged art using a variety of technologies and techniques. When I came to The Beekman School to teach drawing and photography three years ago, I was not quite sure how to approach teaching drawing and photography to students who might not be very interested in “art” of any kind.

Serendipitously, I had one very talented and passionate art student in my first class – but his passion was Manga and Anime, and these were art forms that were largely unfamiliar to me.

The Whitney Museum of American Art: Dedication Ceremony (A Student's Perspective)

Backstage, the motley lot of us huddled together in an attempt to calm our nerves. As participants in the Whitney Museum’s Youth Insights Teen Leadership program, it’s not a rare occurrence to find ourselves nervously awaiting a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We were all intently focused on a small cell phone screen that was playing the live stream of the dedication as we awaited our turn to take the stage as part of the ribbon cutting performance.

Faculty Q&A with History Teacher Ian Rusten

Growing up in the artsy neighborhood of Soho, it is no surprise that Ian Rusten set his sights on a career in the arts. While he enjoyed subjects such as history and English, “I liked drawing even more,” he says. However, after teaching English in Korea after college, he caught the teaching bug and went on to earn an M.A. in Education and an M.A. in History, both at Hunter College.

“It’s funny; teaching as a career just never really occurred to me,” he says.

His students are glad that it finally did.

 

When Students Tire of the Written Word

New Yorker essayist Joseph Mitchell once wrote, “When things get too much for me, I put a wild-flower book and a couple of sandwiches in my pockets and go down to the South Shore of Staten Island and wander around awhile.” It is the first line in “Mr. Hunter’s Grave,” which relates Mitchell’s discovery of an old African-American burial ground still lovingly tended by a local minister. 

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