EL PASO –– On February 15, Ms. Powers’ art classes were invited by the Chinati Foundation on a trip to the El Paso Museum of Art. The classes left at 8 a.m. with students divided between the spirit bus and a suburban for the long journey to El Paso. Around 10 a.m. El Paso time, the class arrived in booming downtown El Paso.
Mrs. Donaldson and Ms. Powers got stressed out parking downtown, but, after that, the two groups united with Chinati’s education team in the park with the alligator fountain. There, we took photos with different statues, and continued walking towards the museum. As we walked we passed news cameras documenting citizens holding signs protesting SB 4 (a Texas House bill about immigration), people on bicycles, people in idling cars, and people in coffee shops. The short walk to the museum made us all very aware we weren’t in Marfa any more!
When we entered the museum, we all met in the center circle reserved for school groups. The Chinati Education team told us our plans. They gave us a worksheet to go through and then set us free.
On the second floor, we were blown away by the marvelous exhibit dedicated to the legendary Texas singer Selena that opened up in the foyer. Farther inside the second floor gallery, we saw the EPMA’s permanent collection, and then continued onto the biennial. This reporter felt very connected to a work called “The Picture of Troy,” in the museum’s permanent collection, because we were wearing the same outfit. For about an hour, the class roamed around the top floor, looking at art from different eras and places and art made recently specifically for the Biennial.
“There’s this one piece, on the wall, it was kinda like a collage but also a print. It had all these different-colored shapes. And it had these prints of tree leaves and branches and boats. I just liked looking at it because it was pretty,” said Piper Donaldson, about a work in the show.
When I interviewed Mrs. Donaldson, who was the trip’s other chaperone, she said, about the trip, “I really enjoyed it, the work was really powerful.”
When I asked Mrs. Donaldson which work she enjoyed the most, she said, “It was in a room all by itself, and it was a bunch of small, little ceramic hearts that were coming down, that were suspended from the ceiling, and each one was commemorating a female victim that had died of violence on the border. And it would have her name and her manner of death on it. And it was all suspended from the ceiling in this huge room. And then on the floor there was more hearts, but they were upside down, in a spiral that was all around the floor.”
Mrs. Donaldson was talking about a work by a local Marfa artist, Bettina Landgrebe, whose work was recently acquired by the El Paso Museum of Art.
I then asked Mrs. Donaldson, after hearing about her having a moving and personal experience with a piece of art, what she thinks the benefits of field trips that expose students to things like art museums are. She said, “It’s important to be able to look at art, to be able to describe how it makes you feel, and to interpret the artists’ feelings as well. It’s good practice, too, to visit museums, be it a history museum, a science museum, an art museum –– it helps you grow as a person.”
After the trip to the museum, we went to Cielo Vista Mall. The Chinati Foundation gave each of us $20 to buy food at the food court. Then, Ms. Powers and Mrs. Donaldson let us loose in the mall for an hour before we had to head home. It was an awesome field trip!
