YCBA Photo
Linda Friedlaender.
The Yale Center for British Art has added to its education initiatives a program geared toward young people on the autism spectrum.
A YCBA press release indicates that “Exploring Artism, piloted by the Education Department last spring, is a monthly program for families with children, ages 5 to 10, who are on the autism spectrum. The program, designed in consultation with the Yale Child Study Center, provides the children — and their families — an opportunity to engage with objects in the Center’s galleries, providing opportunities to look and respond to art.”
“Art activities deepen connections forged in the galleries,” the YCBA’s press release points out.
The director of the Yale Child Study Center (CSC), Fred R. Volkmar, is “an internationally recognized expert in the study of autism spectrum disorders,” added Linda Friedlaender, YCBA’s curator of education in an email. “Dr. Volkmer validated our intentions of providing visual experiences for children on the spectrum as they tend to be more visual learners than the average population of young children. Clinicians from the CSC gave workshops for staff and docents about autism spectrum disorders and strategies for working with them in the museum. … each session is carefully prepared with a looking exercise in the galleries which includes multi-sensory experiences to help the children relate to what they see.”
The YCBA has also added a program called Art Circles. The program is “for anyone interested in participating in a collective journey of looking at what the artist decided in a work of art, and how we derive meaning from it today,” said the YCBA’s assistant education curator, Jaime Ursic. “Unlike other presentations at the center, Art Circles is a spontaneous, extended experience with one art object where open-ended discussion about that one object heightens participants’ appreciation and understanding of it.”
The YCBA is also offering workshops related to Caro: Up Close, an upcoming exhibition by sculptor Sir Anthony Caro.
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