Student docent program challenges quick judgements about art

By T. Esperas

Karen Kienzle, curator of exhibitions and collections at the de Saisset Museum, expressed her desire for students to be more involved with facilitating the quarterly exhibitions at the museum. Emily Lewis, a sophomore, took the idea and ran with it, creating "Explore with Me."

"Explore with Me" is an original, student docent program introduced at de Saisset this spring quarter. As docents, students guide visitors through the exhibits. This program is important not only to de Saisset, but also for the community at large. It demonstrates that the museum is dedicated to involving students in the museum's operation and education. More importantly, the program targets the quick judgments made about art and society as a whole. We often form sharp opinions and uneducated judgments about things we don't know much about. "Explore with Me" aims to defer these judgments by educating and encouraging participants to explore the layers of contemporary visual art.

"The work and effort that Emily has put into the 'Explore with Me' student docent program is incredible," said Rebecca Schapp, director of the de Saisset. "Emily understands her responsibilities and has taken a real leadership role with the program. A big part of the success of this program hinges on student involvement, and that begins with the leader being a student,"

Lewis, a double major in art history and English, approached Brigid Barton, a professor of art history, with her own desire to do an internship in museum education. At the same time, Kienzle, who was a little more than a yean on the job as curator, juggled curating tasks along with museum education programs. Usually, these two tasks are managed by separate departments in a museum.

Kienzle and Lewis collaborated and came up with an idea to create a docent program specifically for the temporary exhibitions. "Explore with Me" is the name of the student run and staffed docent program that Lewis designed and implemented. Lewis was also promoted from intern to member of the student staff as museum educator.

Lewis interviewed museum education officials from various Bay Area museums in order to learn more about existing docent programs at other museums. She met with officials from such institutions as the San Jose Museum of Art and Cantor Center for the Visual Arts.

"The museum education staff at these institutions was willing to share information for the success of the de Saisset," said Lewis, "The support was felt."

Lewis' leg work resulted in the fruition of a docent program that is supervised and staffed by students. Moreover, the docent program departs the traditional scripted tours lead by docents. Instead, student docents are trained in a "spontaneous dialogue with viewers," said Lewis, "There is no script."

The docent program reflects the diversity of museum viewers, students, and art. The program promotes a collaborative exploration of art work in the museum. While designing the program, Lewis was forced to address unique challenges posed by the student based program. A typical docent training program requires docents to attend nine to 14 months of intense training. Due to the schedule of exhibitions, which rotate on a quarterly basis, and the schedule of student docents, who are at different stages in their undergraduate careers and juggle ever-changing schedules, the training sessions are comprised of six sessions.

Lewis has drawn on the vital and diverse expertise of the art and art history faculty and staff to provide a solid foundation and educational training for student docents. Four of the six sessions were lead by art history professors who have volunteered their time and knowledge to ensure that student docents are trained well. They also lead training sessions that were focused on active discussion.

In addition to the support of the art history faculty, the body of students reflects the cutting edge diversity of contemporary art and the goal of the program. Student docents range from art history majors to those with no art history background. Men and women of different ages volunteer their time to be a part of this program.

Schapp also acknowledges the importance of their involvement. "These students have chosen to expand upon this academic setting, moving outside of the four walls of the traditional classroom environment, and are learning more about contemporary art in a inter-active learning style," she said.

The conversational style of this docent program is meant to create a dialogue between viewer and student in order to explore artworks and reach a state of educated judgment. Lewis took in to consideration that many contemporary works of art challenge viewers by addressing various social issues and also by the use of untraditional medium.

"Explore with Me" will culminate in Docent Days, which take place in conjunction with artist in residence days scheduled during the spring exhibition "Cut, Copy, Paste: the Art of Contemporary Collage."