Ways to Utilize the Maier Collection for Faculty

Some ways to utilize the Maier Museum of Art:

• Provide a change of scenery by conducting a class session at the Maier.
  We have an 8ft projection screen, wi-fi, high resolution LCD projector, DVD player, CD player, tables and chairs available – just like your classroom, except you’ll be surrounded by world-class art!
• Select art to view and discuss at the museum with your class, search for art using the online catalog of the collection or contact the Maier’s Curator of Education, Laura McManus, to help you find artwork related to your course or assignment.
• Collaborate with the Maier staff on in-depth research projects.
• Propose an educational program that relates to our exhibition(s) and/or collection.
• Encourage students to participate in the Helen Owen Calvert Writing Competition, by submitting their creative or academic writing inspired by art in the College’s collection.
• Encourage students to join FRAME, Randolph College’s student docent and art club.

How Randolph Faculty have utilized the collection:

• Debbie Huntington brings her Spanish 302 class to the Maier to choose a work on display in the galleries, research it, and present a 5 -7 minute lecture about it to their classmates, in Spanish.
• Ken Parks brought his lighting design class to the Museum to study the use of light in compositions and the use of color and contrast to create luminescence in paintings. His
  students also learned about the ways Museum staff use lighting in exhibition spaces.
• Karin Warren routinely assigns Clouds in the Maier: A Cloud Type Identification Quiz to her Environmental Studies “Eyes on the Sky” class. Students examine works of art in galleries 2, 3 and 4 and identify the cloud types depicted in each work.
• Professor Warren also assigns a Museum visit for students who work in pairs to choose one or two landscape paintings to present to the rest of the class, focusing on views of nature as represented in the work. They are expected to explain what philosophies and attitudes regarding nature and wilderness are relevant to the work they have chosen, and to offer opinions as to whether those attitudes fit in well with the period in which the work was created.

Let us help!

Contact:

Curator of Education
Laura McManus
lmcmanus@randolphcollege.edu
(434) 947-8136, ext. 5