Art Show - Lessons Learned

5th Grade Oil Pastel Paintings inspired by Marc Chagall

I'm a "learn by doing" kind of person. And usually that means learning from my mistakes (i.e.what not to do!). But last week I had the rare privilege of learning from something that I unintentionally did right!!

Every Spring we hang an Art Show that coincides with our school's Open House. In the past, I always saved everyone's work throughout the year, and then chose each student's best piece to hang in the Art Show. This way parents also got to see a sampling of all the projects we did throughout the year. Makes sense, right??

But this year was different. We chose instead to show one project from each class. So rather than every class displaying a variety of projects, this year we displayed 20 (or however many students are in each class) versions of the same project. We still have variety, as each class is presenting a different project, but the entire show has a more organized, less chaotic feel to it. And this way parents are able to see how each child had a unique approach to the same instructions. An additional benefit was that I was able to print out a small poster for each class project, with an explanation of our objectives, a short biography of the famous artist we learned about (with examples of his or her work), and a "faith application" (we are a Christian school) suggesting how this lesson could be applied to our daily lives. While none of these are the reason we planned our Art Show this way, they seem to be worthwhile changes. We've gotten such a positive response from our "new look" that we may choose to do it this way every year!

Now a question.... Our Art Show is hung in the lobby of our auditorium, so a couple of the classes have their work mounted to the walls and the rest are hung from cords across large windows, "clothesline style". I would love to come up with a better way to display these pieces, so that the work can hang straight and not keep sliding together..... any ideas out there???