Tag Archives: AVAM

01.12.24
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Celebrating MLK, Jr. Day in Baltimore: Your Round-up of Inspiring Events!

Monday, January 15, 2024 marks the 41st MLK, Jr. Day, honoring the towering legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Our own Baltimore City has a deep connection to Dr. King, who visited several times to deliver important public addresses, including 60 years ago on October 31, 1964 to help “get out the vote” just after winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Even closer to home, The New Century School lives by much of what the Civil Rights giant made possible.

Dr. King dedicated his life to the nonviolent struggle for racial equality in the United States. His leadership was pivotal in ending entrenched segregation for African Americans and in creating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, considered a crowning achievement of the civil rights era.

Baltimore hosts several events observing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. These events are a great way to honor King’s legacy, celebrate the progress that has been made in the fight for civil rights, engage in volunteer service, and connect with our communities.

Community Events

The Baltimore City Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Parade wends its way down—you guessed it—MLK Blvd. and features marching bands, local colleges and universities, fraternities and sororities, and more.

The theme of the 42nd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration hosted by Johns Hopkins University is “Where Do We Go from Here—Chaos or Community?” The program will be livestreamed and is based on Dr. King’s final book. The keynote will be given by Mae Jemison, an engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut as well as the first African American woman to travel in space. (TNCS students know her well.)

Museums

At King Day at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, experience Martin Luther King Jr. and Maryland’s Year of Civil Rights through art, music, and storytelling; hear a choral performance by the Carter Legacy Singers; learn about the Montgomery Bus Boycott from Deborah Pierce-Fakunle and Dr. David Fakunle, mother-and-son storytellers known as Dr. Mama; immerse yourself in “I Am A Man,” a virtual reality program; and explore the Memphis Sanitation Workers protest. Admission is free to this monumental event.

Visit the MLK Jr Day Celebration by Unique Johnson at The Walters Art Museum, an event that will explore Dr. King’s legacy through poetry and music, and is free to attend (with required registration at the link above).

Celebrate “one of history’s greatest visionaries” (see what they did there?) at MLK Dare to Dream Day at the American Visionary Arts Museum (AVAM). Admission is free on Monday, allowing you to tour the museum as well as enjoy live music and dancing performances, open mic, a poetry slam, and more.

The B&O Railroad Museum invites you to experience the fusion of music and history on hallowed grounds, presenting Wordsmith and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in tribute to Dr. King. An original song and composition directly inspired by the powerful narratives found in the B&O Railroad Museum’s Underground Railroad exhibit will be debuted. (The Museum was designated a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Site in 2021 and opened a permanent exhibit, The Underground Railroad: Freedom Seekers on the B&O Railroad, in 2022.) Tickets are free!

Service Opportunities

Volunteer at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, organized by the United Way of Central Maryland. Service opportunities include efforts to address high-impact issues affecting Marylanders, from housing and mental health to food access and transportation. Both in-person and virtual projects are available, including building bicycles, creating gardening beds, and packing hygiene kits.

How will you observe this great day honoring a great man?

Additional resources:

04.13.18
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TNCS Elementary and Middle School Students Visit AVAM!

Last week, Immersed profiled self-taught Baltimore multimedia artist Matt Muirhead’s visit to The New Century School to present his crankie to a rapt group of preprimary students (read TNCS Preprimary Gets Wounds Up for a Very Special Art Show). This week, some of the older students give their inner artists a turn.

Teachers Nameeta Sharma and Jon Wallace escorted the 3rd- through 7th-graders on a field trip to the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM), a true Baltimore gem. “We wanted to expose the students to Baltimore art as well as make that connection with what [art teacher Jenny Miller] teaches and frequently discusses,” said Mrs. Sharma. “These students love to be hands on, and we try to make opportunities available to them to deepen their understanding and engage them.”

“We are the National Museum for Self-Taught Artisans”

(No really–Congress said so!) It’s a great fit. Like TNCS, AVAM is special in so many ways. AVAM was founded in 1995 by Rebecca Alban Hoffberger who envisioned a “museum and education center that would emphasize intuitive creative invention and grassroots genius.” Rather than displaying specific artists or styles, themed exhibitions circulate through AVAM to complement its permanent installations.
The museum’s 7 educational goals are:

  1. Expand the definition of a worthwhile life.
  2. Engender respect for and delight in the gifts of others.
  3. Increase awareness of the wide variety of choices available in life for all … particularly students
  4. Encourage each individual to build upon his or her own special knowledge and inner strengths
  5. Promote the use of innate intelligence, intuition, self-exploration, and creative self-reliance.
  6. Confirm the great hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best, in our own voice, at any age.
  7. Empower the individual to choose to do that something really, really well.

TNCS’s visit began in the Jim Rouse Visionary Center with an introduction and a run-through of the rules by museum educators Sara and Emily. They explained that AVAM features truly visionary art, which they defined as “art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.” The visionary artist typically receives an inspirational message or vision that he or she is compelled to manifest, often not considering the manifestation to be actual art. Another key characteristic of visionary art is the use of unusual materials.

To get the most out of this wondrous experience, the large group split into two, with 3rd- and 4th-graders first taking a docent-led tour of the exhibits in the main building, and 5th-, 6th-, and 7th-graders heading upstairs to make some art in The Thou Art Creative Classroom. The groups then switched activities.

The Great Mystery Show

The main exhibit currently is The Great Mystery Show, which “. . .  artfully peels away the veil of the unknown, playfully exploring mystery as that one secret power behind great art, science, and pursuit of the sacred . . . [in a] wildly visual exaltation of the strangeness and wonder of Life itself.” The viewer gets transported to other-worldly realms, lost in the experience. TNCS students deemed it “cool.” 

Planetary Pendants

The group not touring was busy making. In a craft inspired by featured AVAM artist Edward Woltemate and also tying into The Great Mystery Show exhibit, TNCS students created their own wearable planets out of Perler beads. Woltemate and other visionary artists create imaginary worlds or explore the mysteries of the existing universe through their art.
To get their minds spinning, TNCS students were asked to consider whether they would create an imaginary planet or reproduce a known one. Would it have rings? What kind of weather would it have and would the weather be visible in the planet’s atmosphere? Is the planet inhabited? If so, by what or whom? What do the inhabitants eat? 

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TNCS students are incredibly fortunate to not only have this world-renowned museum of “outsider art” (also known as “intuitive art,” “raw art,” or “art brut”) just a couple of neighborhoods away but also to have teachers who understand the importance of taking them there. Visiting museums and engaging with art paves the way for students to live richly and meaningfully. It also connects them with their fellow humans and their humanity, helping them to become responsible world citizens.

More Great AVAM Offerings

The list would be never-ending, but here are some highlights that shouldn’t be missed!