{"id":6896,"date":"2009-11-09T14:45:54","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T18:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=6896"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:43:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:43:07","slug":"benton%e2%80%99s-student-docents-share-passion-for-art-with-novice-museum-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2009\/11\/benton%e2%80%99s-student-docents-share-passion-for-art-with-novice-museum-visitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Benton\u2019s Student Docents Share Passion for Art with Novice Museum Visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Docent<\/a>
Docent Kevin Solorzano, a sophomore, leads a tour of the William Benton Museum of Art. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Against a backdrop of colorful Afghan carpets, a dozen or so first-year students listen attentively while student docents Julia Rockwell and Kevin Solorzano tag-team as leaders of a tour of the William Benton Museum of Art<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook carefully at these carpets,\u201d Rockwell, also a freshman, suggests to the students. \u201cYou\u2019ll see army tanks depicted in them, as the women who made the carpets include the things that affect their lives in their art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students were taking a University Learning Skills seminar with Aaron Collins, an academic advisor with the Academic Center for Exploratory Students, part of the First Year Experience (FYE) program<\/a>. The seminars are designed to help freshmen learn about UConn\u2019s community resources.<\/p>\n

With an increasing number of FYE instructors incorporating tours of the Benton into their curricula, the museum\u2019s education coordinator Tracy Lawlor last year began training students to be docents, in an effort to increase the comfort level of freshmen, many of whom have never visited an art museum before. Benton docents have traditionally been adult volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents who haven\u2019t been exposed to museums may give art a chance if they listen to another passionately excited student who is about their own age,\u201d says Allison Footit. A junior art history major, Footit trained and served as a Benton docent last year. \u201cI loved learning how to talk about art, both formally in terms of the painting or object itself, and conceptually about the ideas behind the work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the FYE students visiting the Spirit of Afghanistan: Carpets of War and Hope<\/em> exhibition took the docents\u2019 advice. \u201cI\u2019m trying to observe little things, because you always see more when you take the time to look,\u201d said Jules Saint-Louis, a freshman who plans to major in ancient history.<\/p>\n

When the tour shifted to the Women\u2019s Work, Women\u2019s Dreams: A Century of Swedish Women\u2019s Arts<\/em> exhibition, docent Solorzano, a sophomore, used one of the paintings as an opportunity to talk about Impressionism. \u201cI\u2019m a communications major,” commented Rockwell, “so I can talk to the students about how I like the colors in the art. Because Kevin\u2019s an art and art history major he feels comfortable answering students\u2019 questions about the style of a particular work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawlor says student docents need not be fine arts majors. Participants so far have majored in French, journalism, political science, and the sciences. A potential docent\u2019s willingness to commit the time to training is most important, including 90 minutes of instruction weekly, as well as homework, such as reading the catalogue for each exhibition. Additionally, students have to be reliable and become confident public speakers.<\/p>\n

\"<p>Docents<\/a>
Docents Julia Rockwell and Kevin Solorzano discuss an exhibition of Swedish Women's Arts at the Benton Museum with students in a First Year Experience class. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Students who become docents gain valuable experience that helps build their resumes. But mostly, they value the opportunity because it enhances their knowledge of art.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love learning about art by talking about it with other people,\u201d Solorzano says, adding that he studies up on each exhibition. \u201cI feel it\u2019s my duty to tell people about art if they don\u2019t understand something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rockwell, who is related to painter Norman Rockwell, says she thinks the best thing about learning to be a docent is sounding more intelligent about art: \u201cFor the rest of my life I\u2019ll know more about how to look at and ask questions about art.\u201d<\/p>\n

FYE student Lisette Espial, an exploratory major hoping to study resort management, was an active contributor to the group discussions that Rockwell and Solorzano initiated about the exhibits during her class tour. She was so impressed by her tour\u2019s docents, she said, that she too would be interested in working as a student docent at the Benton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Benton Museum hopes student docents will boost other students\u2019 comfort level around the arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-6896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-08 20:01:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6896"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37608,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6896\/revisions\/37608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6896"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=6896"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}