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By Amy Knutson, Education & Programs Assistant

It’s crazy to think that the new school year and P.S. ARTS programs are officially underway! I am thrilled about what the upcoming school year has in store for P.S. ARTS (and personally, I’m still a little confused as to where the summer went).

If you’ve been following this blog you’ll remember that a couple of weeks ago our awesome Getty intern, May, announced the 2013-14 theme for P.S. ARTS, Exploring Our Dreams – Expanding Our Universe, and now I’m proud to introduce you to the masterworks!

What are masterworks? These are pieces of art, music, poetry, dance, or drama that we (P.S. ARTS faculty and staff) recognize as masterpieces that we believe are important for students to be familiar with.

First, a little history on why we choose to have a unifying program wide-theme and masterworks:

The P.S. ARTS staff and faculty recognized that while it was important to provide program-wide consistency for the curriculum, we also didn’t want to keep our 30+ Teaching Artists from teaching what they are passionate about.  One of the reasons P.S. ARTS is unique is that our teachers develop and teach their own curriculum.  This means there is a huge variety of lessons and projects happening in our classrooms every year.

When we first began working with the Lawndale Elementary School District in the South Bay in 2005, P.S. ARTS developed the IAM (Integrated Arts Model) program: for the 6 schools in the district, P.S. ARTS provides 3 teachers who would work in 3 schools in an 11 week rotation, serving every student with music, theater, and visual arts. Our former Curriculum & Instruction Specialist Richard Scher (who is now teaching for us at Grand View Boulevard Elementary School in our inclusion classes) came up with the idea of unifying the IAM program with a theme and masterworks. This gave our Teaching Artists inspiration for lessons and allowed students to easily reference across the disciplines. It was a huge success and last year we expanded this idea to ALL P.S. ARTS schools (with our first program-wide theme being Tree of Life – Roots and Branches).

With this year’s theme we want to encourage our students to not only explore and discover the world and universe around us, but delve into their imaginations, dreams, and aspirations. With that in mind, the faculty and programs staff collaborated on choosing these pieces as masterworks for this year. We look forward to see how these will spark students’ imaginations in our dance, music, theater, and visual arts classes!

Visual Arts:

Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor

Why: Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor (affectionately known as “The Bean”) is a public art sculpture in Chicago. It is the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park and when the light is right, you can’t see where the sculpture ends and the sky begins (acting as a gate between the sky and the viewer)! In his artwork, Kapoor strives to blur the boundary between the limit and the limitless, which is something we’re excited to see our students explore.

Music:

Sunrise from Thus Spoke Zarathustra Op 30., Strauss

Above is a really great video from Gustavo Dudamel (Music Director for Los Angeles Philharmonic) discussing his take on Zarathustra.

Why: Admit it, you knew as soon as the song began what this song was! This piece is culturally and historically relevant given its connection with the Apollo Space Mission and as the opening to Kubrick’s Space Odyssey. Dudamel, one of my favorite conductors to watch, said, “It’s about internal control, and the power of emotion, the power of thought… and the infinite possibilities that that power can give you as you lead your life… something you might think was an impossible dream but which then comes true… That’s the power we all have inside ourselves, to dream and make our dreams come true.”

Poetry:

“First Men on the Moon” by J. Patrick Lewis

That afternoon in mid-July,
Two pilgrims watched from distant space
The moon ballooning in the sky.
They rose to meet it face-to-face.

Their spidery spaceship, Eagle, dropped
Down gently on the lunar sand.
And when the module’s engines stopped,
Rapt silence fell across the land.

The first man down the ladder, Neil,
Spoke words that we remember now—
“One small step…” It made us feel
As if we were there too, somehow.

When Neil planted the flag and Buzz
Collected lunar rocks and dust,
They hopped like kangaroos because
Of gravity. Or wanderlust?

A quarter million miles away,
One small blue planet watched in awe.
And no one who was there that day
Will soon forget the sight they saw.

Why: Even with all the technological innovations that have occurred since 1969, it is pretty amazing to look at the night sky and imagine two men walking around on that shining, white orb. The sense of exploration, adventure, and aspiration is what we hope to inspire in our students this year with these masterworks.

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