In Our View: Middle-School Responses to the Ackland Collection offers a glimpse into the creative minds of area middle-school students through their writings, drawings, paintings and sculpture.

Ninety-two middle-school students from three area schools - C.W. Stanford Middle School in Hillsborough, Horton Middle School in Pittsboro, and Guy B. Phillips Middle School in Chapel Hill - participated in the Ackland Multiple Visit Program in the 2001/2002 academic year. Each visit was comprised of three to four hour-long museum gallery lessons. Middle-school teachers Pamela Fitzpatrick (Stanford), Judy Ingram (Horton) and Angela Greene (Phillips) worked with museum staff and volunteer gallery teachers to design lessons that complemented their curriculum and offered time for students to consider important issues in the galleries and the classroom.

During their museum visits, visual arts students discussed topics such as style, cultural influences on art, where artists get their inspiration and their own personal definition of art. Applying these and other perspectives or approaches to a single painting, sculpture or drawing of their choice helped students identify key aspects of the work that were personally significant. Students then explored their responses and created original artworks and writings.

Visual arts teacher Angela Greene described the process: "I really feel that the Multiple Visit Program is very motivating and brings life to student art. What an honor, as a young person, to aspire to the professional level so early . . . Many of the students' works related the objects they saw in the Ackland's collection to the feelings generated after our terrorist attack. Have we, as a world, always experienced these feelings? My students are artists. I am very proud of that!"

Language arts students selected works to respond to that related to the social studies curriculum for their respective grade levels: Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque European art for the sixth grade; Asian art for the seventh grade; and nineteenth-century European art for the eighth grade. Using the North Carolina writing tests as a guide, Ackland gallery teachers designed pre-writing activities involving extended writing in the classroom and careful looking in the museum's galleries. Sixth- and seventh-graders refined their ability to describe works of art in writing. Eighth graders imagined that they were curators and outlined their ideas of why an artwork should be purchased for the museum.

Selections from some of the students' writing will be hung next to the works in the Ackland's permanent collection galleries as part of the museum's Perspectives label series.

A favorite work of many students was Incoming Tide on the Northumberland Coast by William Bell Scott, described by Patrick Hughes of C.W. Stanford Middle School: "The boulders that the waves crash into when they break makes the painting look like a real coast. You can almost hear the waves pounding against the shore and you can almost see the white water from the waves." The exhibition will also include a three-dimensional rendition of Scott's work titled Seafoam, created by Sydney J. Sogol of Guy B. Phillips Middle School.

Offering students the opportunity to express their feelings, thoughts and knowledge about art by creating their own works resulted in concrete evidence of the collection's impact on a small group of students. For some students the process of generating their own responses to the Ackland collection offered time to reflect - to reveal their skill, emotions and opinions - and, in some cases, to address current events and changes in their own lives.

An opening reception, free and open to the public, will be held on Mother's Day (May 12) from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Ackland. A free gallery talk with Museum Educator Beth Shaw McGuire is scheduled for June 19 at 12:15 p.m. The exhibition remains on view until August 25, 2002.

The Ackland's Multiple Visit Program is funded by The Grable Foundation. In Our View: Middle-School Responses to the Ackland Collection is made possible in part by the William Hayes Ackland Trust. The exhibition was curated by Beth Shaw McGuire and Barbara Matilsky, curator of exhibitions.