Ap Lang class visits Crystal Bridges

Senior Kara Fisk has visited the Crystal Bridges Museum for American Arts on multiple occasions. However, this trip was different. Instead of walking aimlessly around the endless galleries of varying mediums, Fisk listened attentively to her guide as she slowly analyzed each painting and paid careful attention to each brushstroke.

“I have been to Crystal Bridges before, but this one [visit] was so different because we got to go on a guided tour, so we got to hear other peoples’ perspectives on the paintings and people who are really knowledgeable about it and I wasn’t just having to make assumptions or read the card,” Fisk said.

Fisk and her fellow classmates recently took a trip with their AP Language teacher, Katy Moore, to the esteemed museum to connect the analysis of art to the analysis of literature. This is Moore’s third year to incorporate this trip into her curriculum through a program titled the Art Teacher Fellowship.

“A couple years ago, I started a program at Crystal Bridges called the Art Teacher Fellowship, and it teaches social studies and English teachers how to incorporate art into their curriculum so it’s not separate, but really incorporated,” Moore said. “For me, it made me feel so much more engaged with writing and reading and history that I wanted to share it with my students, and it’s also a requirement of the fellowship that we go. That fellowship changed the way that I approach teaching and started me think how do artists think and that’s why I’ve been so determined.”

For Senior Bailey Vaughn, who visited Crystal Bridges for the first time with Moore, this excursion has helped her dig for the deeper meaning in the texts she reads in class and learn to be quizative.

“I think that on the trip, we were able to establish kind of a more comfortable feeling of questioning art, and I think that again translates back into literature,” Vaughn said. “It made us more comfortable to freely question what things actually mean and their deeper meaning.”

Each student was able to relate to a specific work of art while learning how to analyze what the artist was portraying. Senior Jenny Osorio reflects on one of her favorite pieces she viewed.

“My favorite artwork was Beethoven’s Trumpet with the ear, and I liked it because of the trumpet and it plays Beethoven’s music when you clap or speak into the ear,” Osorio said.

However, this trip was not only valuable for classroom use, but to learn to experience and write outside of the classroom.

“I want them to look at things think not from a perspective of what I see or ‘I’m bored,’ but really start to think analytically about ‘I wonder why this was created’ or ‘I wonder what happened’ and really have that experience,” Moore said. “From an AP Lang perspective, that’s what we do with literature – we take something that what written and say ‘What motivated this person to write this? What were they thinking? Why do they want to change this point?’ Art is the same as literature, and I want them to have that same experience.”