“[Art] embraces [the community]. It is powerful, from my perspective.”
Since 2006, LACMA has partnered with over 40 elementary and middle schools in surrounding neighborhoods through Art Programs with the Community: LACMA On-Site. During the partnerships, which run between two and four years, LACMA teaching artists work with students in six-week sessions, exposing them to the museum’s encyclopedic collection and helping them create their own artworks in response.
Last fall, we had the special opportunity to work with sixth-graders at Dickison Elementary in Compton as they conceived and painted a mural made up of eight panels in the school’s cafeteria. The project began with a vision by two Dickison teachers, Ms. Clifford and Ms. Fitzgerald, who wanted their students to leave a mark on a school that many had attended since kindergarten. The teachers approached Dickison’s LACMA teaching artist, Gustavo Garcia Vaca, with a challenge: eight 4’ x 8’ blank wood panels, 64 students, and a timeframe of only several weeks.
LACMA On-Site encourages classroom teachers to collaborate with teaching artists on their curriculum. The sixth-graders studied works in LACMA’s collection, including those by Diego Rivera, Sol Lewitt, and Jackson Pollock, and learned about a variety of movements, styles, and techniques. Working in small groups, they conceptualized, planned, and executed their murals and wrote an accompanying wall text for each.
The following images and statements are a testament to the students’ thoughtfulness, talent, and sense of pride in what they accomplished.
“We chose our theme because we want to inspire the younger kids to grow up and not judge people by their cultures. We also chose cultural pride because we want people to know how proud we are of our own culture as kids from Compton, which sometimes people outside of Compton judge us for. We want people to feel welcomed here at Dickison Elementary. They should also feel inspired and motivated to make a change in our world.”
“Art isn’t just paint on a canvas, it has a background story, our mural has a background story…‘Walk in our Shoes,’ you’ll see Compton through a different perspective...When people hear ‘Compton’ people think, Compton is so bad, with the gang violence and all that…Me and the group want to reach out and tell them that we all are not bad, we all have good inside of us.”
“I want to come back to the school in at least 20 years and say, ‘I did that! We did that!’”
Art Programs with the Community: LACMA On-Site is made possible through the Anna H. Bing Children’s Art Endowment Fund. Additional support is provided by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Goodwin Family Memorial Trust, The Employees Community Fund (ECF) of Boeing California, and the Louis and Harold Price Foundation.
Sponsored by 
.JPG){kind=small}
Education programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are supported in part by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund for Arts Education and the Margaret A. Cargill Arts Education Endowment.