Today was a bilingual group, I started out from the garden, checking in with the group with some ice breaker like greeting them in Chinese and asking them several questions. Then I asked them what they expected to see today, turned out they were expecting to see our old permanent collections, so I have to manage their expectations by introducing them to the artist and the medium he uses. From introducing gun powder as a source of casting away ancient monster, I asked them to hunt for a different creature that also protects and is a symbol of royalty and prosperity- the dragon. I allowed them about 5 minutes or so to spread out and count the dragons in the courtyard, the kids were very excited they get to run around a bit and compete to see who got the most count. Then I settle them down and introduced our court yard a bit and then went into the first gallery, the one directly across from the gift shop. This exercise is great for younger kids as they either were sat on the bus for a long period of time or had been sitting for a long period of time upstairs. So it allows them to let loose a bit and you can also see how the group will behave and respond as a whole.
We sat in front of the poppy artwork, I am big on visual so in my tour I always incorporate some form of video to explain what the artist do, today I found a video on how Cai prep his work from sketch to finish. It is about a 10 minutes video. I would pause in between and ask them questions, like why did he use that long stick with a pen at the end, what is the purpose of that, what would you have done etc. I find that at this age audio visual really explains a whole lot more of his work, and seeing that in action was very exciting for them. After that I hand out paper and clip board and ask them to draw what Cai had intended his flower to look like. I discovered there were many young artists in the group. I prefer using my own video sauce than relying on the video in the gallery is because it loops and I can never tell which part of it that we will be watching. Having my own gives me more control.
After this fun activity we head to the Pyramid, they again sat down and since they are in bilingual class, some can read the writing on the canvas. I had them guess what are the things astronauts saw when they look down on earth from space. This also received many interesting answers, I asked them individually what they would want to see if they themselves were in space. Sometimes I had them draw out the image on the clip board.
We then head to the adjacent gallery and we studied the porcelain flower. A vote on if they like the original version or the tempered version. I find that older kids like the gun powder version vs young kids like the original one.
For the second group we did not head to the Pyramid but instead we went into the room where the Pray for Protection is. They did not seem to be bothered by the images and were having lively conversations about what war, lives, and the meaning of peace (dove) in the artwork which I was very impressed. A little history lesson never hurt.
After all I think the tour was successful, this age group is very engaged the entire time so don’t be afraid to tour them, they many times are so eager to speak than most of the middle school kids…..
Also having name tags on them helps a lot, you can often call a student by name to get a respond. They also appreciate you remembering who they are.
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