New Education Curator Joins the Flock

Because I hail from Chicago, you might think my life as a city dweller was devoid of nature and birds and that moving to northern Wisconsin during the Woodson Art Museum’s 36th annual Birds in Art exhibition may seem a bit foreign. Actually, I feel quite at home. Growing up in the city, I was lucky to have parents who encouraged outdoor time, especially birding. I often traveled to bird sanctuaries on Chicago’s lakefront to watch migratory visitors, and a love of birds – sparked there – has persisted. Throughout my life, I have participated in a variety of environmental activities, including Audubon youth programs and ornithological fieldwork at Beloit College. And someday I’d love to share the photographs I took of birds in the Galapagos Islands! My interests, experience, and fields of study range from museum studies to environmental politics to art history. To my surprise and delight, my post-college job search brought me to a Midwest museum that serendipitously combines so many of my interests.

As I learn more about the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, I realize what an ideal match it is for my talents and interests.

Moving north from Chicago has been a big change, but also a welcome one. As a new curator of education I have many things to learn about shepherding the docent program and coordinating school visits. I know I will enjoy each challenge ahead. The staff, docents, and volunteers at the Museum all have helped make my transition a smooth, albeit busy, one.

During my first two weeks, I have been able to experience the diverse and creative public programming offered by the Woodson Art Museum. From “Green Fire” screenings and Art History 101 to school visits and Toddler Tuesday, the Museum is serving diverse communities. The Museum’s tradition of quality programming and exhibitions meets the high expectations of visitors time and time again – a tradition I am proud to be a part of now.

Starting at the Museum when I did, I missed the flurry of activity that comes with the installation and opening of Birds in Art. However, the excitement of visitors is fresh and allows me to understand the true appeal of the exhibition. High school students during a docent-led Experience articulated it perfectly, saying the exhibition is filled with the energy of both bird and artist. They noted the artists’ different perspectives and how the choices of medium and composition reflected the characters of birds and artists. I was impressed, as were other visitors who quietly listened and smiled as they overheard the conservations in the galleries.

The natural anxiety of settling into a new home is dissipating as I realize I’ve relocated to an intelligent, dedicated, and artistically sophisticated community. My welcome to Wausau and the Woodson Art Museum is turning into a “welcome home” for me.

Serendipity Is Our Friend

Programs sometimes come together effortlessly. At other times, gathering information or confirming details can feel like herding cats. Then there is the program that seems to drop out of the sky and into our laps.

Such was our experience last week that began with an intriguing email message from formidable community organizer and woman of many talents, Mary Weller, asking me to call her about an “idea.” When Mary has an idea, you want to hear it!

An early morning conversation brought me up to speed on Central Wisconsin’s upcoming final 2011 Honor Flight. Mary and her husband, Bob, had been key players in this important endeavor and had gotten to talking about the spouses who stay behind while the veterans spend an action-filled and exhausting day in Washington.

Mary asked: could something be planned for the spouses at the Woodson Art Museum?

That’s all it took. A simple question.

Mary and I ran through possibilities and within minutes I had notes and a to-do list.

With the Museum closed to the public on Monday and the staff at work, it would be an all-hands-on-deck day that required everyone to play a role from set-up to lunch prep and serving and from greeting our guests to facilitating discussion in the galleries and overseeing watercolor painting.

We were on the case, ready to go.

The program went off without a hitch on Monday, October 17. Two dozen-plus Honor Flight spouses arrived at the Museum with smiles, eager for their own adventure. Following lunch in the gallery, Museum staff and SPARK! friends engaged in conversations that resulted in poems, stories, and memory sharing. The experience concluded with art making – something to take with, mementos of their day.

The returning veterans would certainly have lots to tell their partners, and following their afternoon at the Woodson Art Museum, the Honor Flight spouses would have stories to tell, too.

Some programs are just meant to be.

Aldo Leopold: A Wisconsin Treasure

Last fall I led a bus trip to southern Wisconsin for Museum members to experience museums, historic sites, theater, and fine dining. Our first stop on this three-day trip was the Aldo Leopold Shack and the Leopold Center Green Building near Baraboo.

We arrived on a beautiful fall day in October. After a short bus trip from the Leopold Center, we pulled up to a path that led through a field of wild flowers surrounded by pine trees planted by Leopold and his family in the 1930s and 40s. Beyond the path, nestled in the pines, was the “shack” where the Leopold family stayed on weekends and school breaks as they worked to bring back the land of a depleted worn-out farm.

Our guide shared stories of the Leopold family and introduced the group to A Sand County Almanac, the collection of essays written by Aldo Leopold that examines our perception and use of the land we live on and our relationship with the natural world. His essays express a reverence and respect for nature and have endured as one of the first publications to encourage a land ethic.

Today, Leopold is recognized as an important figure in the development and understanding of ecological awareness. On Sunday, the Woodson Art Museum proudly presented Green Fire, a full-length documentary film about Leopold and his ideas. The film was introduced by Stan Temple, a senior fellow and science advisor to the Aldo Leopold Foundation and professor emeritus of forestry, wildlife ecology, and environmental studies at UW- Madison. In fact, Stan occupied the same wildlife ecology professorial “chair” as Aldo Leopold; an impressive continuum.

Leopold’s legacy lives on in his many publications, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and now through Green Fire. He truly is a Wisconsin treasure.

OctoBIRDfest through German Tourists’ Eyes

I benefited from a “fresh eyes” fix on Saturday while guiding four German media representatives on a tour of the Woodson Art Museum. The Museum was one stop, coordinated by the Wausau/Central Wisconsin Convention and Visitors Bureau, on the Wisconsin Department of Tourism’s fall international tour.

2011 Master Artist James Coe with Ute Bartels of Germany

Representing large- and medium-sized newspapers in the Rhein-Ruhr region (Germany’s most populated area), the Nuremberg region, and fourteen radio stations, this group was particularly interested in the international aspect of the 2011 Birds in Art exhibition. By turns, they each looked closely at artwork by two German artists, Bernd Pöppelmann and Ute Bartels, and were interested to learn that Bartels, a first-time Birds in Art artist, traveled to Wausau for the opening weekend festivities here last month.

They marveled at the varied depictions of birds, the works by Andy Warhol, John James Audubon, and three generations of Wyeths in A Collective Journey, and Steven Siegel’s Let’s fan out repurposed paper sculpture on the Museum's grounds.

Meandering between large white tents and a pumpkin patch, they witnessed preparations for OctoBIRDfest, the annual fall festival that drew about 1,000 youngsters and family members to the sculpture garden later that day.

In a collective nod to central Wisconsin’s German heritage, OctoBERfests pop up throughout the area each fall – sometimes even in September. In Germany, a volksmarch can lead you – with walking stick in hand – from one village fest to another on an even grander scale. Having just seen Birds in Art, the Germans were amused by the OctoBIRDfest title.

What is it about hosting a tour that helps you see your own backyard anew, with the fresh perspective of a visitor’s first impression? It’s invigorating and satisfying to witness the delight and amazement on faces as visitors turn each corner and experience the Museum, inside and out, for the first time.

Make the Woodson Art Museum a stop on your itinerary the next time family and friends visit. For groups of ten or more and with three-weeks notice, we can arrange a docent-led guided tour. To lead your own group, consider checking out audio tour headsets, pick up events calendars, activity guides, and sculpture garden seek-and-find maps. Then experience the Museum and the ever-changing exhibitions anew through the “fresh eyes” of your visitors.