Over the weekend, the work of a few dozen high school students went on display at the Aspen Art Museum. There is painting, sculpture and mixed media pieces.
It’s part of a program called Young Curators of the Roaring Fork, which is a program of the Aspen Art Museum. Heidi Zuckerman, the museum’s CEO, started the program ten years ago when she felt like people couldn’t speak openly about how they felt.
“A lot of people communicate on a superficial level,” said Zuckerman. “It could be because of technology, but what I’m interested in in a broad way, and specifically with the program, is working with people to define their language to be really specific.”
The program works like this. First, student curators are selected from schools throughout the valley and beyond. They don’t even have to be art students necessarily. They get together to judge art submitted by local high school artists.
“We have to figure out how to pick some of the pieces that everyone likes, and pick the pieces you don’t like and learning how to live with that decision,” said Sari Behr, a junior at Aspen high School. “You have to figure out how to accept what your peers’ ideas are.”
They narrowed down the dozens of pieces they received, to work by 14 artists. It was a collaborative process that forced students to dive deeper into how they feel about specific works. It wasn’t just about if they like it or not. They had to expand more on the feelings they had about each piece.
“What do you see?” said Zuckerman. “ And what do you think? What do you value and how do you defend it?”
Zuckerman says she is trying to help students think openly and honestly, without doing it offensively.
The results of the curation process are on display at the Aspen Art Museum. TishMcFee teaches art classes at Glenwood Springs and Bridges High School. She says she’s seen her students change and benefit from the program.
“They grow because they have to put their work out there which is so so personal,” said McFee. “They have to ask to be accepted into a show. I know that’s really hard for them to do. To have someone else judge whether their work fits in. To them, it’s ‘do these people even like it?’”
In the ten years of the program, Zuckerman says she has seen the program evolve from having just artists, to being a more diverse crowd.
“The kids in the program don’t necessarily make art themselves,” said Zuckerman. “In fact, very few of them do now. They’re more interested in visual culture, and that kind of criticality.”
Sari Behr is enjoying her second year of participating in the program because of how he has learned to collaborate with other students.
“I’ve met so many people that I never would have met that I get to work with in this environment,” said Behr. “It’s really interesting to listen to them and hear their perspectives and meet them.”
The show is on display through next weekend.
