{"id":1947,"date":"2017-08-04T12:51:13","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T16:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/thelantern\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2017-09-11T16:14:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T20:14:23","slug":"tea-time-for-docent-emeriti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/thelantern\/2017\/08\/04\/tea-time-for-docent-emeriti\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea Time For Docent Emeriti"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, June 10, the Colby College Museum of Art recognized and celebrated retired volunteer docents with a formal tea in the Parker-Reed Room of the Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center. Active docents, professors from Colby\u2019s Art Department, and Museum staff were in attendance to share memories and honor this newly formed group of Docent Emeriti.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In 1989, Lynn Marsden-Atlass became Hugh Gourley\u2019s assistant and the Museum registrar. It was then that, Marsden-Atlass established the Museum\u2019s volunteer docent program. This program included over thirty community members who visited local schools to discuss works in the collection and gave tours of the museum. The group was led by Hilary Ervin until her retirement in 2006. Ervin, Gourley, and later Alice Fitzgerald are credited with forming a volunteer program that has become a crucial aspect of the museum\u2019s education and outreach efforts to the community. Ervin and Fitzgerald were two of the many docents whose hard work was recognized and appreciated at the Docent Emeritus Tea.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Linde Family Foundation Coordinator of School and Teacher Programs Margaret Aiken shared the following remarks:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From left:\u00a0Phoebe Corwin (emeritus), Carol Welch (emeritus), Lisa Wheeler (current), Sylvanne Pontin (emeritus).<\/p>\n

We are here today to honor the volunteers who began and continued the docent program at the Colby College Museum of Art. Without their dedicated contributions, especially those of Hilary Ervin and Alice Fitzgerald, I am sure the Museum programs we know and love today would not exist. The foundation you built continues to inspire and guide us.<\/span><\/p>\n

So where are we today? While I have only had the pleasure of leading the Colby Docent Program<\/a> for approximately two years, my primary goal is to continue the tradition your group began by teaching docents how to engage students\u2019 minds and hearts when looking at and talking about art. As docents, what we all really hope is that students make a personal connection with a work of art, that we break down barriers for entering an art museum, and that they enjoyed the experience enough to return with friends or family.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Regarding teachers, we have built on the relationships you established with local schools. Our goals are still to make the school-visit experience easy to schedule, a pleasure for teachers, chaperones and students to attend, and a learning experience that they can incorporate into the curricula they are teaching back in their schools. In an effort to be more relevant to the students\u2019 studies and to strengthen relationships with local teachers, something we call \u201cField Trip Experiences<\/a>\u201d were developed over the past year and launched this fall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Field Trip Experiences are thematic tours, studio workshops, and pre- and post-visit activities created for Maine teachers, by Maine teachers based on Maine Learning Results, classroom curricula, and the museum\u2019s collection. On these tours, students use paintings and sculptures as primary documents to learn more about topics such as the Civil War, Maine\u2019s economy, landscapes and the environment, and the ways artists use elements of art to tell stories. Last fall, we began asking a few new post-visit survey questions including \u201cWas the tour helpful in reinforcing what your students are studying in school?\u201d Of the sixteen respondents, thirteen said \u201cyes.\u201d , One educator wrote, \u201cYes, this is a reinforcement of critical thinking and how students’ thinking or point of view meshes with big societal questions\/conversations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Student docent Ling Ding, ’18, leading young students on a tour.<\/em><\/p>\n

The current docent corps has spent hours learning and practicing pedagogy, studying not just information about what works are on the tour, but also how to communicate, ways to meet the specific needs of young visitors, and carry out the expectations of the teacher who planned the visit. This year alone, the Museum had 4,003 school visitors, and docents led 280 school tours! On top of that, they performed 113 hours of public tours. We are thankful that our docent ranks have grown to almost forty docents, as the continued success of our school-visits program and making art accessible to K-12 students in Maine is almost entirely dependent upon their energy and willingness to volunteer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the other highlights of the past two years, and exciting new ways docents have been involved, are:<\/span><\/p>\n