The 1999 Carnegie International: Connecting Kids to the Contemporary World

What is CI:99/00? It is the logo for the 1999 Carnegie International exhibition, and you will be seeing it all over Pittsburgh as the city gears up for the November opening of the exhibition that is America's most important forum for the presentation of new International art. On view from November 6, 1999, to March 26, 2000, the exhibition features painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, film, and video art by 41 artists from 22 countries. It promises to amaze and engage its visitors and, for teachers, offer fresh ways to approach subject matter across the academic disciplines to enrich students' understanding of the present-day world.

To prepare for this event, Carnegie Museum of Art educators have been working with middle and high school teachers for the past year. Generously supported by The Grable Foundation, this progressive collaboration between the Museum and local teachers was initiated to examine the relationships between contemporary art and teenagers and the links between contemporary art and school curricula. Contemporary art is challenging for most students-even those who are familiar with art are often bewildered by the nontraditional techniques and media that artists use today. Recent surveys of local middle and high school students revealed that the majority of students cannot define contemporary art, and those who try generally disregard it for fear of being "wrong" about its meaning.

Today's art frequently requires decoding to reveal its full meaning. Without guidance, students are unlikely to make connections between the art they see in the 1999 Carnegie International and their own lives, so the Museum invited Pittsburgh teachers to develop ways to make this exhibition and its content accessible and meaningful to their students. These teachers expressed the need to encourage greater personal understanding and experience of the visual arts, supported by high-quality, well-researched resources and expert coaching. The Museum responded last fall with a collaborative program of research and planning to prepare teachers for the 1999 Carnegie International and, in turn, to guide their students toward thoughtful and imaginative responses to the artworks in the exhibition. Over fifty teachers participated throughout the year. From these emerged a group of teacher advisors who brought expertise in various aspects of education to the collaboration. Mara Cregan (CAPA High School), Susan Hofrichter-Watts (Upper St. Clair High School), Victoria Machtay (Fox Chapel High School), and Jim Reinhard (North Allegheny Senior High School) have comprised the Museum's CI:99/00 Teacher Advisory Committee. The group's charge has been twofold: to recommend ways in which the International can help teachers structure learning experiences that achieve curriculum objectives and to broaden students' thinking about contemporary art and its role in their lives. These advisors have planned workshops and provided guidelines for research, printed resources, and programs identified as essential to sharing contemporary art with students.

The creation of a resources notebook for teachers and the production of a videotape mark this project's progress towards its ultimate goal of involving middle and high school teachers and students from all over Pittsburgh with the International. The Teacher Resources notebook contains lesson plans and materials to support students' and teachers' exploration of contemporary art. The lesson plans have been designed to incorporate the richness and complexity of the Carnegie International into visual arts, language arts, social studies, and technology curricula. Teens and Contemporary Art: The 1999 Carnegie International is a videotape produced by the Museum with the guidance of a high school student advisory team. Designed to familiarize students with the challenges of contemporary art and the development of this exhibition, the video will be distributed to area schools later this fall as another tool to help teachers prepare their students for visits to the International.

More information on these materials and other ways for you to prepare for the 1999 Carnegie International can be found inside this issue of Learning Links, which is devoted to the exhibition and the unique educational opportunities it presents.