Looking to Learn NOCCA Opening

1,800 people visited the Ogden Saturday night during White Linen Night. Attendees donned their summer whites and danced to the music of Lightnin’ Malcom while they viewed the five new openings and took a break from the heat in the A.C. Saturday marked the official opening of the Education Gallery’s new exhibition Looking to Learn featuring the work of students from New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA). NOCCA offers its students a directed approach to exploring visual arts. Students are taught by both artist-teachers and visiting artists, exposing them to different art forms and keeping their minds open as they discover the type of artists they want to become. Looking to Learn is an ongoing education series curated by the Ogden that showcases student art, honoring the teaching of art throughout the area. A number of the NOCCA artists were present for the opening on Saturday night to see their work hanging in the museum. The exhibition will be up through September 2011.

Fashion Camp at the O!

Style ruled at the Ogden from July 18 through the 22nd, as aspiring young designers conceived, created, and put on an entire runway show in just a week. Working with New York-trained, New Orleans-based designer Veronica Cho, students aged 12 to 15 learned about the history of American fashion design before settling down to sketch out their own ideas. After a group critique, the scissors came out and the sewing machines started running, as students – many of whom had never held a needle and thread before – got to work bringing their concepts to colorful, wearable life. The camp culminated in Friday’s runway show, where campers – and some Ogden docents! – modeled their looks for parents, friends, and even some local fashion reporters. Watch it all unfold here!

Southern Play Time: Celebrating Haiti

Our second session of Southern Play Time art and drama camp at the Ogden just ended, and it went out with a bang — and a whole lot of confetti! This session, the campers worked with art teacher Gina Phillips and director Mikko to create a play showcasing children’s folk tales from Haiti. There was a magic fish, a competitive cat and dog, a very troublesome tiger and many more creative animal characters. The campers traded bright, beautiful animal costumes for headdresses and drums to round out the play with a Haitian Carnival — and some of the audience members in the front row went home covered in glitter!

Ceramics: Finding Science in Art

This spring, thanks to a grant from the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Program, Warren Easton High School approached the Ogden about developing a way to combine science and art education. Our solution? Ceramics. Over the course of four after school visits to the Ogden, Warren Easton students worked with local ceramic artist Rashida Ferdinand, discussing the science of ceramics, from the chemical changes that clay and glazes go through as they are fired to the chemical makeup of different ceramic materials. After taking advantage of “Mark Hewitt: Big-Hearted Pots,” an exhibition of ceramic art then on view at the Ogden, students had the chance to put their artistic inspiration and new-found scientific knowledge together, creating their own works of ceramic art.

Meet the 2011 Teen Docents!

Our Teenage Docent program this summer includes five local high school students, all of whom receive a stipend provided by United Summer Grants to work at the Ogden through June and July. In addition to leading summer tours of the Ogden’s collection, Kayla, Drea, Kinmont, Alvin and Lionell are providing invaluable help as counselors at Summer Play Time this month. In July, they will work with a puppet artist to create their own puppet shows — based on works in the Ogden’s collection — which they will then use to provide local art outreach at libraries, schools, and other community centers. The opportunity to take private tours of museums and art galleries in the area rounds out an art-filled summer.

Alvin and Kayla join Summer Play Time students on a tour.

Kayla works with a camper during Summer Play Time.

On a guided tour of the Backstreet Cultural Museum.

The whole group (with interns Emily and Cokey) during a trip to the Backstreet Cultural Museum

Summer Puppet Theater: Bringing Paintings to Life

The Ogden’s second annual Summer Puppet Theater is out on the road, as our 2011 Teen Docents travel to libraries, schools and camps with a puppet show all about some of the Ogden’s most notable artwork. Working with local artist and puppeteer Karen Konnerth, the Teen Docents each chose a favorite painting from the museum and created a story — and whimsical puppets — based on the themes of the painting. The show, which includes six short performances, is a fun and accessible way for younger children to engage with the Ogden’s art, as skits including music, dancing and audience participation bring paintings to colorful, three-dimensional life. To find out where you can see a Summer Puppet Theater performance, or to book a show, contact Ellen Balkin at 504.539.9608 or ebalkin@ogdenmuseum.org.

Kinmont illustrates John Alexander’s painting “Piranhas in Paradise.”

Alvin’s puppets play dice together.

Drea’s puppets play a game of hide-and-seek.

Cokey’s puppets build a “Rocking Horse.”

Kinmont and Lionel introduce their puppets to the audience.

Children come up to meet the puppets after a show.

Summer Play Time 2011

The first session of our third annual Summer Play Time camp at the Ogden was full of creativity and craftsmanship! Local elementary school students worked with actor/director Mikko and artist Gina Phillips to create their own play, sets, and costumes based on a Southern theme. The current exhibition One World, Two Artists: John Alexander and Walter Anderson served as the major source of inspiration for our young artists and playwrights, and the final performance on June 17th brought down the house!

Discussing a Walter Anderson work.

Photographs of the cast of characters: Southern swamp animals!

Hard at work on props for the play.

Excitement during a tour of the Ogden’s collection.

Mikko discusses artwork with the campers.

Examing artwork by John Alexander.

The Ogden Family Fair– A Coastal Celebration

September 2010

By Ogden Education

On August 22, 2010 the Ogden Museum hosted its third annual Family Fair welcoming more than 600 friends, both old and young, out of the heat and humidity of the New Orleans summer for a Coastal Celebration. In honor of the remarkable environment that contributes so much to our local community and culture, children were invited to create oysters, shrimp and crabs sculptures out of newspaper, fanciful hobby sea-horses and whimsical pelican hats. Families were also treated to several performances throughout the day.

Making cypress trees out of pipe cleaners

African drummers and dancers from Young Audiences

String instruments played by members of The Greater New Orleans Suzuki Forum

Calliope Puppets presents a puppet show of Louisiana Tricksters

Posting a wish for our beautiful yet fragile coast

Aubrey Edwards Immortalizes Black Love Campers On Film

When the kids from Black Love Summer Camp entered the Ogden’s “Where Y’At” exhibition, they saw a host of familiar faces.  In Aubrey Edwards’ edgy yet nuanced portraits of local Bounce musicians, the children found their uncles, aunts, family friends, and even their camp counselor, Sess 4-5.  Edwards explained the concept of portraiture, then invited the campers to photograph one another mimicking the poses they saw in the exhibits. Like this:

The inspiration for this pose was the portrait of Sess in the upper right of the picture, but when the kids got together for a group photo, their poses were all their own:

The Black Love camp let their exuberance shine through, echoing the spirit of Bounce music.

Education at the O Featured in “50 Awesome Art Museum Blogs”

Bestcollegesonline.com recently featured the Ogden’s education blog in its article about art museum blogs.  Blogs like Education at the O are “fantastic resources for those who want to get more out of their local art outlets.”  Check it out!

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2010/06/23/50-awesome-art-museum-blogs/