Level of difficulty: Advanced Cost to attend: Free Award Winner: 2019
Project: Organized by an ad hoc group of Robert Reed’s former students and colleagues, a series of day-long intensive drawing workshops, art lectures, panel discussions, and exhibits highlighted the art and teaching of Robert Reed, the first (and only) African American tenured by the Yale School of Art.
Students on stairway sketching at Robert Reed Dra
Lead time: 18 months Date of event: Feb. 21-24, 2019 in State College, PA and March 23, 2019, in New York City, NY.
Resources:
1 lead volunteer – 500 hours
100 additional volunteers – working 2 – 20 hours each. These ranged from workshop instructors to lecturers and panel discussants to more casual volunteers who helped with registration and meals.
Total volunteer time: 1600-2000 total hours
Robert Reed
Permissions required: Use of archives & use of various spaces
Funds required: $47,000. 15 different funding sources contributed money for a total of $47,000. Money was used to provide free art materials to the students, plus free lunches and receptions. Donors included individuals, academic institutions, museums, and regional Yale clubs.
Results:
272 students had the opportunity to participate, learn and be inspired.
47 volunteer instructors and speakers reconnected with Reed’s teaching methods
Many more were exposed to Robert Reed’s art.
Why a success?
These workshops provided a starting point to research and promulgate Reed’s teaching methodology.
They provided a laboratory and studio to collaboratively recreate and document the kinds of art learning experiences Robert Reed provided at Yale and Yale Summer Programs.
They exposed many young artists – and art educators – to these kinds of experiences and demonstrated how such experiences can inspire aspiring artists.
Details: Prof. Robert Reed developed legendary intensive and immersive studio programs, yet documentation of his pedagogy and art is not accessible to the public. In order to bring the spirit of this legendary African-American artist and educator to a new generation of students, a group of his former students and colleagues organized this series of drawing workshops, lectures, and panel discussions to coincide with contemporaneous exhibits of Robert Reed’s work at the Whitney Museum in NYC and the Palmer Museum at Penn State. In addition, they provided free drawing materials and meals for almost 300 students, as well as food and drink at two museum receptions.
