China.Porsche by Ma Jun
On the Thursday of the TAEA conference, before the sessions started, we headed to downtown Dallas to see three art museums that are very close together: The Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum, and the Crow Collection of Asian Art. We especially wanted to go to the Crow because we wanted to see Full Circle, Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold.
China.Porsche by Ma Jun, detail
We were delighted to also find China.Porsche by Ma Jun, a work commissioned by the Crow Collection. We also got to see several groups of children at the museum and their reactions to the car.
Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold
Ai Weiwei's animals were incredibly detailed and beautiful. He has created them in two sizes; these were the smaller ones. They are based on figures from a Chinese palace that is now in ruin.
Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold
Pieces of the Berlin Wall
The conference was held at the Anatole Hotel in Dallas, a hotel with the largest collection of artwork in the world (according to the hotel). Though most of the art is Asian, the pieces of the Berlin Wall shown here were prominently displayed.
The most incredible high school student art was on display. Both of the pieces shown here were by students of Nicole Brisco, which I didn't realize until after I had first looked at the artwork. Nicole often has had articles in SchoolArts Magazine. In fact, our publisher discovered her during a TAEA conference.
Another artwork by a student of Nicole Brisco.
Carol Rose, Claire Ross, Audra Miller, and Pam Day
Our final presentation on the last day of the conference (sadly, the third day was cancelled because of impending bad weather) was about Pride in Place, a collaborative project between the North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts, the Wichita Falls Museum of Art, and four art teachers from Wichita Falls ISD. You see them here: Carol Rose, Claire Ross, Audra Miller, and Pam Day. We all worked together to create curriculum materials and present teacher workshops on place-based art education and Texas artists. (We'll also be presenting this at NAEA).
All of these photographs depict the highlights of the conference for me. Our featured general session speakers were also fantastic, especially street painter Melanie Stimmell Van Latum and yarn bomber Magda Sayeg.
State conferences are so worthwhile to attend. We get recharged and refreshed, make new friends and connect with old ones, and learn so much from each other. I highly recommend it!
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