Developing Close Looking, Creativity, and Community Through Writing and Art

ABSTRACT

Writing Salon at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, is a series of free creative writing workshops for adult audiences. The program uses art as an inspiration for writing and embraces writing as a powerful way to experience art. Highlighting the parallels between the writing and art-making processes, the program demonstrates that writing can be a tool for encouraging visitors to slow down, look closely, spark creativity, and find deep meaning within works of art. This article shares the pedagogical approach through case studies of two workshop topics.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum teaching
• creative writing
• closely looking
• lifelong learning
• creativity
• visitor engagement
• self-discovery

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge our colleagues at Harvard Project Zero whose work has influenced our pedagogical practice, and particularly Shari Tishman for her research insights around slow looking. We thank participant Kristen O’Keefe for sharing her experience of a workshop in “Think you’d be inspired by a Calder mobile? Then this writing salon is for you” in The Washington Post. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Gallery who support the Writing Salon program and to the program participants who teach and inspire us at each session.

Disclosure statement

 No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the authors

Nathalie Ryan, as a Senior Educator and Manager in the Department of Gallery and Studio Learning at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, has coordinated in-gallery and studio programs for families, teens, and adults since 2002. She also facilitates educator professional development workshops for Harvard Project Zero.

Mary Hall Surface is an award-winning playwright and theater director specializing in performances for intergenerational audiences and multidisciplinary collaborations. Since 2007, the National Gallery of Art has commissioned her to create four theater productions inspired by visual art. She is a teaching artist for the John F. Kennedy Center, Harvard Project Zero, and the National Gallery of Art, where she was the instructor for the Writing Salon’s first two seasons and continues to teach in the program.