I feel fortunate that the high school I went to in Montgomery County, MD, was close enough to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, that going to museums became something I simply took for granted. After all, our national museums are free of charge, and easily accessible by public transportation.
I feel fortunate that several of my teachers took advantage of our location and incorporated into their curricula, visits to the museums — either as class field trips or as homework assignments for us to complete on our own. One project in particular that sticks with me to this day (and I see now it foreshadowed my later career as a museum educator), came through French class. We were each assigned a French artist and charged with researching them, finding an artwork by them to study visually, and ultimately to give an oral report on them—in French, of course!
To this day, I remember that my artist was Poussin — whose works I don’t particularly like, now as an adult; I much prefer the post-Impressionists like Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec. Yet, that project made such a lasting impression on me, in my mind’s eye I still see the cherubim flying in the sky with Poussin’s distinctive clouds… and a brief reflection on the memory was suddenly sparked by Lucille Clifton’s poem, “study the masters,” when I read it this morning — allowing this new poem to fly out of me:
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