An open house was held this past Saturday at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, with Saint Louis University students acting as docents. The students were completing a requirement for Exploring a foundation for the Arts: Examining Minimalism in American Art, a class offered in collaboration with the Pulitzer Foundation.
The exhibit the students worked with is called “Minimalism and Beyond,” and it will run through April 26.
Although this is the first time any class like this has been offered, it is not the first interaction SLU has had with the foundation. “A few years ago SLU offered a series of lectures with the Pulitzer,” said Pulitzer Director Matthias Waschek, “but I was thinking [lectures] are not where we have our strengths. Our space is natural light and about having a very strong presence of artworks. Something completely different from a lecture hall.”
Tim Reichman, visitor services manager, agreed with this, saying, “We’re not a real ‘museum,’ we’re about the experience. We don’t just want to be giving lectures; it’s a different approach.”
Although some of the class periods were spent in the traditional classroom setting, many hours were spent doing research and hands-on training at the Pulitzer. “It’s very much an experimental learning course,” said the professor of the course, Shawn Smith.
The course is offered as an American studies class, which turned out to be much more ideal than was expected. “It was really just convenient and coincidental that many of the minimalist artists were American,” said Smith. “It was just a great fit.”
The students were enthusiastic about the program and what it had to offer. “Being able to hang out and do research in the Pulitzer’s library was very interesting and much more interactive. You would research a certain artist or piece and glance up and it would be there,” said grad student Nicole Haggard, working on her American studies Ph.D.
Although perhaps nervous at first, the student docents were eager to present their artists and explain the meanings or ideas behind the different pieces. “As the open house has progressed, the students have become a lot more comfortable; pretty soon they will be out in the streets telling people about [minimalist] Donald Judd,” Reichman said.
Grad Student Alicia Sowinska presented an original artwork by Felix Gonzalez Torres, made up of a pile of “candies, individually wrapped in silver cellophane (endless supply),” according to a Pulitzer pamphlet. “It’s not very often that you have something like this in an art institution,” said Sowinska. “It affects all your senses.”
In addition to the apparent success of the course, the open house itself was a great success. They had approximately 100 people in the first hour. “But we’re not really about the body count,” said Reichman. “It’s just nice when you have an event to familiarize people, to have so many people show up.”
Besides showing off the docents, the essential idea behind the event, and behind the entire course, was to form more of a connection between the Pulitzer, located at 2716 Washington Blvd., and the nearby SLU community. “So often it seems students are almost wary to go beyond Lindell,” said Smith. “This gives them a reason, and a connection with the Pulitzer.”
“It encourages interaction not only between SLU and the Pulitzer, but between students and the public,” Reichman said. “It was a very imaginative idea for a course.”
Though nothing is set in stone, everyone was very energetic about pursuing a similar course in the future. “We wouldn’t be able to have the exact same course, as the intellectual content would shift as the exhibits would shift,” said Smith, “but it was has been a very successful semester.”
“The students don’t get full docent training,” said Waschek, “but it’s very good to want to involve students. You may normally be intimidated by someone in an authoritative position, but when it is someone of your same age, students may even ask more questions . I hope this is not a one-time thing.”
