THE Museum Studio during the past winter gave Junior Members an opportunity to join any of four classes: pottery, sculpture, painting and wood-carving. The Studio was not conducted as a classroom, but rather as a workshop where boys and girls came because of their interest, and where they found out that the Museum offers many exciting adventures in art.
The South American collections were the inspiration for much of the creative work in painting and in some of the other groups. Motion pictures of the country, animals and people were shown, and lantern slides and stories of South America added to the entertainment. Some of the members were more interested in Eskimos and polar bears, or Indians, pyramids, and so forth, while still others worked out designs relating to their hobbies and outside interests.
At the end of the season an exhibition of the work done by the members was held in the Studio. The wood-carving shown in Plate VIII is an original design drawn and carved by Paul Greenwood, 13 years old, during the time he attended the wood-carving class.
During the meeting of the Studio, each Saturday morning, informal gallery talks by members of the Museum staff were arranged for those parents of the children who cared to attend; a different section of the Museum’s collections was covered each week.
The children varied in age from six to sixteen, and there was an enrollment of eighty-seven boys and girls, with an average attendance of seventy. We are grateful to the following who served as instructors in the Studio: Mrs. Emily Swift, Miss Elizabeth Otto, Miss Leora Heyman, Miss Elizabeth Parker, Mr. John Corneal, Jr., and Mr. David Taylor; also to Mr. Edmund Curtis and to the School of Industrial Art for the use of the School kilns for baking the pottery.