Art students explore the Fowler Museum at UCLA
As the famous artist Romero Britto once said, art is too important not to share. Jennifer Lee and Tracy Acosta, art teachers, took their students on a field trip to the Fowler Museum on Jan. 20. Many students from art classes varying from color and design to IB Visual Arts attended the field trip which allowed them to not only see new forms of art but to also visit the UCLA campus.
Lee has been teaching art at NPHS for 11 years and has personally been to the LACMA museum a handful of times. Despite having been to several art museums she still enjoys these trips because she has the opportunity to “see what’s out there and to appreciate different types of art.”
“I like going to art museums because I’m still discovering new artists, and seeing different ideas of what art can be,” Lee said.
Nicole Lewis, senior, recalls that as an IB Visual Art student she values any opportunity to expose herself to new art forms which may lead to sources of inspiration for her own work. “I can look at different styles, I can look at the masters and I can look at the lesser-known people and get a broad view of how different techniques are used, how different mediums are used and the different kinds of subjects,” Lewis said.
Personally, Lewis was drawn to a paper mache piece at the end of the gallery tour. It was a scene composed of skeletons and a depiction of Satan holding a police officer and a cauldron of burning bodies. With such complex themes like the piece previously mentioned Lewis valued the fact that those running the tour “looked more at the themes and the different aspects of the art rather than just reading the plaque and doing a lecture. It was very much like a conversation,” Lewis said.
Seeking to broaden her horizons beyond Acosta’s classroom, Kira Germann, senior, decided to attend the field trip since she had yet to attend one throughout all of high school. “I thought it would be a cool experience with everybody to get out of the building of school and learn through experience,” Germann said.
The Fowler Museum is the home of many different masks and sculptures from a variety of cultures. “I love learning about places globally and it was so beautiful to see all the unique ways (the art pieces) were different from each other,” Germann said.
