My Art Gallery

Agora Gallery intern Anna Merritt, pictured with artworks by Eileen Olimb.

Art Gallery Activity

For the "B" part of the class we’ll form groups of 4 Curators (students) to build virtual art galleries (online galleries using Wix).

Your Gallery

Your gallery should have a Theme or Focus. For example:

Young Southern California Artists

Upper Paleolithic Art from Southern France and Northern Spain

Contemporary Art from Shanghai & Hong Kong

Cambodian Art in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge

and so on.

Your Gallery should represent 4-7 artists

For most galleries you should plan to identify 4-7 artists that fit your galleries theme and plan a group exhibition of their works. Kind of like a Fantasy Baseball Team, you can pick RL artists that you’d like to have in your fantasy or VR art gallery.

Copyright

Living Artists & Dead Artists

For dead artists like Vincent van Gogh or Pablo Picasso, you can find images online and use them in your gallery. Wikipedia has many useful images that are copyright free. You can also find other online images and give credit and links to the sources.

For living artists, please email the artist, explain your project, and ask for permission to show their work on your website. In the interest of time, you can start working with their images as soon as you have emailed them. Most artists will either say "yes" or they might not reply at all. In both cases we can use them for our school-related non-commercial galleries. If an artist should say "no", then of course you can’t use their work in your gallery. I don’t think we will get very many "no"s.

Gallery Focus

Some of the ways you might choose to focus your gallery are by

Media
Time Period
Geography
Content

Gallery Websites

You only need 1 website for your group’s gallery. Your whole team can work on it.

However, each person should post on their own Tumblr. Use Tumblr like your notebook or journal documenting images, web links, quotations, ideas, and anything else you find as you research artists and your topic.

Website Content

Your gallery should have 1 page for each artist you represent, plus 2 aditional pages (Home/Theme and About/Cotact).

Home Page/Theme Essay — an essay on the theme of your gallery. 4-5 paragraphs. Start by explaining the vision of your gallery. Your mission. What art & ideas are featured in your gallery. Then include 1-2 sentences about how each of your artists fit within your gallery vision. Your theme essay should be illustrated with 1 image from each artist.
Artist Essays – Each artist essay should be its own page. 4-5 paragraphs. 5 images of the artist’s work (If close-up detail views, or installation views are appropriate, please include them too). Introduce the artist and how they fit in your gallery. Describe their background (age, geography, culture, ieas, focus, and so on). Then describe their work formally. Then conceptually. Then go through their work and comment on how each work supports your gallery vision.
About/Contact Page — Your About page should (A) describe the gallery and its mission. (B) list the curators. For each curator include a photo and 1-2 sentence bio. (C) for Cotact, you could list someone’s email or have a contact form.

Gallery Presentations

Each group will present their gallery to the class. We’ll have an in-class signup sheet to pick which day each group will present. One person from your group might choose to be the lead presenter, but everyone must present at least a part of your gallery.

List of Galleries & Curators

For each gallery, make a free Wix website. Leave a comment on the bottom of this page with the URL of your gallery, and the names of the curators (students) working on your gallery: