As with every year, the program takes on a slightly different feel. This summer, the MAP students’ objective was to welcome and encourage 100 Acres visitors to interact with the Park’s natural environments, and its installations through games and activities which they facilitated.

Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin of the art collective Type A helped kick off spring training by talking with the MAP teens about their work and teaching them some of the team building initiatives used with Museum staff during the development of their piece Team Building (Align).

These games set the tone for a summer that was largely about helping people lower self-erected barriers to art and nature, while allowing them to connect with their surroundings and the people around them in fun and sometimes unexpected ways. I’d have to say, if visitors’ smiles and laughter were indicators of success, then the MAP teens did a nice job!

Thanks again to all the IMA staff who shared their time and passion for what they do to make this place so “tight!” …that’s a little MAP teen imprint oozing out.

Hello, my name is Donte. My thoughts about the museum are just all positive. It is a beautiful and resourceful place to be. It is way more than a museum to me and I’m sure it is to others.

My MAP experience thus far has been great. Just simply art informational and filled with opportunities. As an artist, I always look forward to being or working at the IMA.

In this experience I look forward to coming out of here with way more art knowledge than I had, overcoming mental obstacles, understanding more about nature, and getting the experience to work with a group.

Hi, my name is Kazeerat, I’m 15 years old and a junior at Northwest High School. I work at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the job is very awesome. I get to work with great people and I have fun everyday. I love the art.

The art [in 100 Acres] is so huge and beautiful. Anyone who sees it is going to love it. We also have some famous artists coming to the Museum [for the 100 Acres Opening] so it’s your time to see them. I urge you to come.

You have no idea how fun all this is because as soon as you see [the art] you just fall in live with it. I think the Museum is like no other one.

Hi, my name is Alberto Argueta and I am one of six people in the IMA MAP Program. I’m Mexican American and from Chicago, Illinois and now live in Indiana. Being a part of the MAP Program at the Museum has been fun and I hope to get and give a lot to the program.

Art has always been something I’ve liked to do and see, so this is a big opportunity for me. One of the projects we were given was to partner up and go to the 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, and basically find a spot and do whatever you were inspired to do.

Jakob and I made a small map and built this small house out of sticks and leaves. We took nature and embraced it. I had a lot of fun and hope there will be more where that came from. PEACE.

What I would have given for the opportunity to work in an art museum as a teenager—to have had access to such beautiful settings and stimulating interactions. Rather, like a lot of young first time job seekers; I wound up in the slippery kitchen of the fast food industry.

But this blog is not about me. Instead, I’d like to introduce to you the teens of the 2010 IMA Museum Apprentice Program (MAP). The IMA MAP employs high school sophomores and juniors during the spring and summer to explore what’s happening behind the scenes of the IMA, while working on projects alongside Museum staff.

This year, the MAP teens are learning about 100 Acres and planning creative experiences that will encourage Park visitors to engage with nature, art and with one another.

Check back as the MAP teens will be blogging about their experiences with art, nature and other things that catch their interest.

Hello, I’m Jakob, a junior at Herron High School and a member of the IMA Apprenticeship Program. This is my inaugural blog post, the first of what I hope to be many this summer. We’re still in training, but all signs are pointing to this summer being outstanding, and I’m really enjoying the atmosphere of the museum and its staff. I’ve always had fun at the museum, but now that I have the time to really take a look at things around here in detail, I’m finding more and more to admire.

It’s a great place for me considering how often I think about aesthetics anyways (I’m planning on going to art school), and I’m very happy to work at a place where everything I look at, from what’s on the walls to the design of the building and its grounds, is instructive and worth studying.

I’ll leave with an example of what I mean:

Interview with artist Dawoud Bey
As published in the fall issue of the IMA’s Previews membership magazine

Q. Can you tell us when you became interested in portraiture?
As I began to figure out what I wanted to do as an artist, I was spending a lot of time going to museums and galleries looking at work by other photographers. The pictures that resonated for me most strongly were those that were of human subjects. There seemed to me something quite powerful about a person confronting the camera, returning the attention of the photographer. Early on I was most struck by the photographs by Mike Disfarmer that I saw at the Museum of Modern Art in the mid-70s. I also was struck by Richard Avedon’s show of portraits at Marlboro Gallery around that same time. James Van Der Zee’s photographs had impressed me in the Harlem On My Mind exhibition. I wanted to make photographs that resonated for me the way those photographs had.

Q. How did you begin to focus on photographing teenage students?
Young people became the primary subject of my work in 1992, when I was invited to do a residency at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Andover. During the eight weeks I was there, I photographed both students at Phillips and students from Lawrence High School, a town a few minutes away. I also worked with the teachers to extend the idea of the portrait into the classroom in other forms, including writings produced by the students. I began to realize how much young people were excluded from the fabric of “the art world” as I knew it and how much their images had been stereotyped in the larger culture over the years. I decided then that I wanted to construct a more complex representation of these young people while also engaging in my own ideas about the photographic object.

Q. Can you talk about how you develop your relationship with the students you work with?
My relationship with the students actually begins while photographing them. I make photographs as a way to find out something about someone. I don’t attempt to develop a relationship and then translate that relationship into a picture; I do my finding out through the camera. All of the pictures in Class Pictures were made by spending two or three weeks in each school. Usually I have only 45 minutes in which to take a student’s photograph, since the student has been released from class in order for me to photograph them. Before making the photograph I ask the student to sit quietly for a few minutes and write something about themselves. Once they are done I make the pictures without reading what they have written. I think if a portrait is well done the viewer is left with a feeling that they have connected to the life of another human being, even though they may be a stranger. The photographs are posed and highly staged, but with an eye towards creating an appearance of informality.

Q. What advice would you give to a young Indianapolis student looking to discover his or her own voice through art?
I would say look at as much art as you can, and make as much art as you can. Never stop looking, and never stop learning. The whole history of art is available to you; it is up to you to know that history and to figure out what you want to contribute to it. Then seek out the training and education that will allow you to accomplish that. And have fun too!

Class Picture Day on Flickr!
In celebration of Bey’s exhibition, we’re inviting you to share your own high school pictures. Artist Dawoud Bey displays statements written by the students alongside the portraits he captures. Be sure to include your own caption.

Submit your class photos, past or present, and we’ll post our favorites here on the IMA Blog!