Artist Visit at the DeCordova

A collaborative plan with The Carroll School and the DeCordova museum in Lincoln made a valuable visit possible with an artist as he installed a new exhibit. As 8th Grade students asked the artist, Eric Hongisto, questions they learned about the installation and the theme of the exhibit. One new term they garnered was a “site specific” installation—an exhibit that is created specifically for one location. Unlike other forms of artwork, this exhibit will not be permanent.

The artwork is comprised of designs painted on interior walls and words adhered to a 2-story window. After reading the words—Peak, Margin, Bubble, Foreclosure, FED, DJIA—and seeing the lines, shapes and graphs painted on the walls, the students understood that this exhibit is about the stock market crash of 2008-2009. Curious students asked, “Are you coming up with the design as you paint?”; “Do you ever make mistakes?”; “What made you want to paint about the stock market?” The visit and interaction with the artist and his exhibit demonstrates one more way that Carroll effectively integrates multi-sensory learning into our students’ daily lessons.