After a two year absence, Art Goes to School is back in classrooms in Bucks County

At the front of Ms. Della Porta’s second grade classroom, Jenn Glatt was holding a print of an abstract painting by Bucks County native Louis K. Stone. The Gayman Elementary second-graders took turns guessing at what it was supposed to show: a rug, a mailbox, a house, a sign, maybe a knight.

A boy in a blue shirt spoke up. “It looks like real things.”

Another, in the back corner, said it looks like everything. “And he used his creativeness,” he adds.

Glatt reminded the students that there are no wrong answers.

“If Mr. Stone were alive today, he would be so excited to hear all of your guesses,” Glatt told the classroom.

Glatt is a volunteer for Art Goes to School, a nonprofit with chapters spanning from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. Tuesday was her first day back in a brick-and-mortar classroom since March of 2020; Gayman Elementary in Doylestown was the first school that the Central Bucks Chapter of AGTS had visited since the pandemic began.

AGTS has been working in the Delaware Valley for over 60 years, and the Central Bucks chapter has been in schools since 1975. Many chapters including Central Bucks were dormant during the pandemic, with volunteers continuing to meet over zoom, but no classroom lessons.

This fall, deciding it was time to return to classrooms, Central Bucks volunteers assembled a portfolio of 20 works of fine art, plus one sculpture. Typically, this includes at least one print from the Michener Art Museum’s collection in Doylestown.

Although the program has had two years of dormancy, AGTS Central Bucks chairperson Maria Kelly said that remaining volunteers are eager to get back to work. “We’re a little rusty,” said Kelly, “but everyone seems enthusiastic.”

The pandemic has taken a slight toll on AGTS: there are currently 39 chapters, down from 50 before the pandemic. The Central Bucks chapter now only serves 11 schools, down from 15 in early 2020. Perhaps most importantly, Kelly reports that the organization needs a new generation of volunteers.

Both Kelly and Glatt got involved with the program when their children brought home flyers from AGTS programs at their own schools. Now that the group is teaching in person again, Kelly hopes that enthusiastic children will inspire parents to volunteer, although anyone with a passion for art can join.

Glatt herself is an artist and incorporates this perspective into her lessons. According to her, most of the Central Bucks AGTS chapter’s volunteers are art lovers, and the program hopes to inspire that love for their young students.

The first piece Glatt showed on her first day back in person was Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory. Several second-graders said they recognized it; when Glatt asked where they had seen it before, one said “in the hallway, before class.”

The iconic Dali piece made an instant impression on the kids.

When Glatt revealed that it was nearly 100 years old, all of them gasped. When she showed them the famous portrait of the Spanish artist, with his mustache waxed up like the hands of a clock, the room erupted in laughter. Every single piece after Dali prompted at least one student to ask how old the painting was, and if Glatt had a photo of the artist.

The next piece after Dali was Marcel Duchamp’s Descending a Staircase No. 2. Although this was another abstract piece from an eccentric artist, the stories of Duchamp’s antics didn’t seem to land with the children in the same way that Dali’s did. Dali was cartoonish, wearing diving suits and taking his pet anteater for a walk. Duchamp would sell bicycle wheels and wine racks as sculptures, a heady critique of art that seems lost on the children.

But even though the kids only see brown polygons at first, Glatt encouraged them to interpret the art on their own before revealing its concept. When Glatt showed them a motion-blurred photo of a man descending a staircase that inspired the print, however, their eyes lit up.

“I’m starting to see it!” said one girl near the front of the room.

Other prints included Picasso, Monet, and most notably for the kids, Frederick Remington. The piece, Dismounted: The Fourth Troopers Moving the Led Horses, is quintessential Americana of galloping horses and gallant cowboy. It received an electric reaction from the children, which Glatt took note for future lessons.

Down the hall, in Mr. Hudak’s fifth-grade class, the students took less of an interest in the cowboy painting, and more in what the artists themselves were like. When Glatt told these students about Dali’s attention-grabbing stunts and his quest for fame, one girl in purple asks “was he greedy about fame?”

Remarkably, this veered the conversation into completely different territory. “Why is the Mona Lisa famous?” “Did Picasso grow up rich?”

To Glatt, this is what the program is all about — inspiring curiosity about art.

“It’s so nice to be back,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Central Bucks Art Education Program Returns to in-class instruction