September News 2024
Written by Bryna Campbell
It's the first full week of autumn, and even though it's still quite hot out in much of the country, we are well on our way to shifting gears and getting ready for the colder months.
As we say farewell to summer, we want to take some time to share some recent work from the last few months.
Introducing New Art Activity Guides for the Oregon Historical Society's Exhibition "A Fountain of Creativity”
We are so very excited to share that we have recently completed a set of youth activity guides for the Oregon Historical Society's art exhibition "A Fountain of Creativity: Oregon's 20th Century Artists and the Legacy of Arlene Schnitzer," featuring art from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.
This exhibition features artists who lived in the Pacific Northwest in the 20th century who's work had been featured in Arlene Schnitzer's the Fountain Gallery, a hub for modern art in Portland that had been founded in 1961.
The guide, "Connecting with Art," has been designed for middle and high school students, while "Exploring Art" was made with elementary students in mind.
This project was developed to provide learning materials for classrooms and families visiting the exhibition, and both guides feature:
Activities that encourage close looking
Activities that draw connections to place and cultures in Oregon
Creative thinking/drawing activities
Both activity sheets can be found at the front desk when you visit the Oregon Historical Society.
Summer Professional Development Workshops and Talks
Art Nature Place in the UK!
We had a busy summer of lectures, panels, and workshops beginning in June, when co-director Mike Murawski traveled to England and Northern Ireland for a series of museum and university talks and and workshops.
His visit included:
A keynote address at MuseumNext called, “Visions of a Different Future"
A visit to the museum studies program at Leicester
A conversation for the "Communities and Landscapes" series for the WILD exhibit at the Manchester Museum
A workshop in Belfast on "“Developing Effective Community Partnerships”
You can learn about his itinerary in this post and his time at the MuseumNext conference in London in this post, both published in the Substack Agents of Change.
Finding Balance: A Professional Workshop on Nature and Self-Care
In July, we had the opportunity to hold a workshop with staff at the Federation of State Humanities on Nature and Self Care.
This is one of our favorite team building workshops, and we really enjoyed exploring some simple guided exercises with the group during their annual retreat, including those featured in the "Finding Balance" guide (pictured in this post) that we designed for the retreat.
National Gallery of Art's Gallery and Studio Learning Staff Retreat
Just last week, co-director Mike Murawski traveled to Washington, DC to meet with the incredible Gallery & Studio Learning team from the National Gallery Art, where he facilitated a staff retreat to define core values & shared purpose.
Mike and the team engaged in collective dreaming, exercised their creative brains, and had a lot of fun together in the process. It has been a joy working with the team and we look forward to continuing the process in a series of follow sessions focusing on values-based action planning.
Working with Us
If you are interested in working with us on a project, partnership, workshop, or are simply want to talk and exchange ideas you can use our online "work with us" form.
You can also email us at:
bryna@supernatureadventures.com, or murawski27@gmail.com.
(All of these will work for the foreseeable future, even as we continue to migrate accounts over to our new name Art Nature Place).
We'll set up a zoom meeting from there to talk about your idea and go from there. We love to talk to people about their ideas no matter how far they are in the process!
And don’t forget to follow us on our Instagram account if you don't yet, and check out our website.