What's/Who's New in the Education Department

You may have noticed that the contact details on the education page of the Addison Gallery’s website now invite you to contact Jamie Kaplowitz. Before I tell you what I’m looking forward to as the new Education Fellow, let me tell you a little about me. I have always felt at home in museums, ever since I stood underneath the 94-foot-long blue whale model at the American Museum of Natural History in New York when I was very young. I am now almost finished with my Masters Degree in Museum Education at Tufts University. I’m working towards bringing together my years of designing and managing artist-in-residency programs in New York City schools, my experience in Visitor Services at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and, of course, my studies at Tufts.

This truly is an opportune time to be starting here in the Education Department, as we’re really providing museum education without a physical museum! Sounds troublesome but it’s actually a perfect opportunity to be creative about ways in which we can still interact with our community of schools and develop diverse programming stemming from the needs of preK-12th grade teachers and students. Please check our education webpages for teacher and school programs and resources. And don’t forget that you can browse the collection online any time that you want to see some of your favorite Addison artworks.

On Saturday I dove headfirst into my first program with the Addison at Phillips Academy’s annual Non Sibi Day, a day of service to honor the tradition of Andover’s non sibi motto, which translates from Latin as “not for self.” Members of the Phillips Academy community – students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents – participate in various community activities in the immediate area and in various locations across the world.

Fifteen Phillips Academy students collaborated with fifteen Lawrence High School students during a daylong photography project at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence. We looked at and reflected on the photographs of teens by artist Dawoud Bey and used these insights to create our own portraits of each other. Connections were made, both artistic and interpersonal, that I hope will continue long beyond Non Sibi Day.

If the successes of Saturday’s program are any indication of the road ahead, I’m happy to say that I can look forward to a rewarding and exciting year here at the Addison!


Jamie Kaplowitz
Education Fellow

Common Threads

Interlacing past and present areas of focus at the Addison, color prints by Arthur Wesley Dow and Sheila Hicks’s woven miniatures will be on view in New York City this fall. Breathtaking, colorful and modest in size, both Dow’s and Hicks’s work share a mastery of techniques, one in printmaking and the other in weaving. Recalling the Addison’s past exhibition Ipswich Days, Hirschl & Adler Galleries will open Along Ipswich River: Color-Prints by Arthur W. Dow on October 10th through November 15th. Explosive in color and inventive in construction, twenty woven miniatures by Sheila Hicks will be on view in Minimes: Small Woven Works at the Davis & Langdale Company, Inc. on October 1st and continues through November 8th. Currently, the Addison staff is busy organizing a touring retrospective of the artist’s work to open in September 2010. Minimes offers a glimpse of Hicks’s oeuvre.

If you are passing through New York this October, then please take this opportunity to re-familiarize yourself with the scenes of Dow’s hometown of Ipswich and discover the innovative miniatures of Sheila Hicks. Both exhibitions promise to be aesthetically pleasing and confirm various ways of artistic creation.

Jaime DeSimone, Charles H. Sawyer Curatorial Fellow

Images (left to right): Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), The Derelict, or the Lost Boat, about 1916, color woodcut, 4 1/8 x 1 7/8 in. (10.5 x 4.7 cm), Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, partial gift of George and Barbara Wright and partial purchase as the gift of R. Crosby Kemper through the R. Crosby Kemper Foundation; © Sheila Hicks (b. 1934), linen and cork for May We Have This Dance?, 2005, sculpture bas-relief at Target Corporation, Minneapolis, Minnesota.