This exhibition features works created by students participating in Learning Through Art (LTA), the Guggenheim’s artist-in-residence program in New York City public elementary schools. LTA partners teaching artists with classroom educators in each of the city’s five boroughs to design projects that explore art and ideas related to the classroom curriculum. The program encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and ongoing collaborative investigation.

LTA students embark on an extended exploration of processes, materials, and techniques to express their singular artistic visions, incorporating multimodal approaches, including text, music, games, and collaboration. By understanding foundational concepts, students are able to experiment with a variety of forms of expression to consider essential questions, such as “How can we portray different sides of ourselves through art?” or “How can we express and access our emotions through art?” They develop responses through a process of seeing, dialogue, and creation. The works in this exhibition express that process.

In this track Guggenheim staff talk about the origins of the LTA program, and teaching artists Jeff Hopkins, Joey Hauk Weiss, and Diane Matyas discuss their experiences working with students.

Transcript
Diane Matyas: Art is about lifting your life higher. I mean, we are just carbon, right? [Laughs.] We’re just some smudges. We’re a very tiny entity. Yet we have so much emotion, feelings, passion. In particular, we’re attracted to things. And what we wear, what we sense, what we think is important comes out, hopefully, through art.

Joey Hauk Weiss: There was a student today who—we were making collages of buildings—and wanted to make a collage of a dream he had had that was of abstract shapes. And I certainly was not going to say no to that. It was just a really interesting idea in the first place. It looked a bit like a Russian Constructivist painting. It had floating shapes, and it was interesting.

Jeff Hopkins: There was a student who was new to the country and was really self-conscious about speaking in front of his classmates. He would make these beautiful origami figures but never spoke to me. For much of the year, we communicated through art. He would make drawings. He would show them proudly. Then one day we went out to do a sketching, like a neighborhood-walk sketching, and we were walking around. And we were going to go in one direction around the corner, and he grabbed me and he said, “Mr. Jeff, don’t go that way. That’s where I live.”

He spoke. And I said, “Wow, wow.” Part of it was that I think he finally built up enough of a rapport where he knew he could say something, and all was going to be good. And I was going to listen to him and respect him. And what happens is the art allows for a type of connection between me and a student.

Michelle Wohlgemuth Cooper: Hi, my name is Michelle Wohlgemuth Cooper. I oversee the Guggenheim’s Learning Through Art program.

Greer Kudon: I’m Greer Kudon, and I was Director of School, Youth, and Family Programs at the Guggenheim Museum.

Hopkins: I am Jeff Hopkins. I am a teaching artist with the Learning Through Art program.

Weiss: My name is Joey Weiss. I went to school for painting. I knew I was potentially interested in teaching, and I decided that I wanted to do more of it.

Matyas: My name is Diane Matyas. I am an artist and a teaching artist.

Matyas: It’s about response to the world. That’s what visual art can be, or music is: the response to the world that you’re living in. So that’s a high-priority problem to solve.

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