MMFA Docent Volunteers
MMFA Docent Volunteers
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    • Welcome Angie Dodson
    • DOCENT GRADUATION 2017
    • DOCENT TRAINING ARCHIVES >
      • 2017-18 Training Materials >
        • August 13, 2018 >
          • MoMA Interactive: What is a Print?
          • FRANK STELLA PRINTS
        • August 28, 2017 >
          • MPS 5 Addendum Group 1
        • Early American Portraits and 19th Century Still Life
        • October 30, 2017 >
          • 19th Century Genre Painting and Realism
        • November 6, 2017 >
          • Uncommon Territory
        • November 13, 2017 >
          • VTS Video
        • November 6 and 13 Recap
      • NEW DOCENT PRESENTATIONS 2017
      • 2016 First Docent Training Pics
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      • 1917-2017: A Century of U.S. Airpower from the Air Force Art Collection
      • Beth Lipman Label Copy
      • Beth Lipman
      • Dinner Bell
      • Frank Stella Prints: A Retrospective
      • Hans Grohs and the Dance of Death
      • Lynn Saville
      • Nature, Tradition and Innovation: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Gordon Brodfueher Collection
      • Pairs and Partners >
        • Pairs and Partners
      • Photorealism
      • Rodin: Realism, Fragments, and Abstraction
      • Sewn Together: Two Centuries of Alabama Quilts
      • Taking it to the Streets
      • Women's Work
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    • BOCQUIN BABY SHOWER
    • Wanica Means in Baptist Commercial
    • Murphy Smith Wedding Reception
  • OLLI Course Schedule
  • Link Page
  • Mission Statement and Announcements
  • HOME STUDIO ACTIVITIES
  • DOCENT FAVORITES
  • DOCENT PROGRAM
    • EXHIBITIONS and ADULT PROGRAMS >
      • EXHIBITIONS, Current
      • EXHIBITIONS, Upcoming
      • SCULPTURE GARDEN >
        • SCUPTURE GARDEN ARCHIVE
      • ADULT PROGRAMS >
        • Ekphrasis: A Monthly Book Club about Art
        • Films
        • Lectures and Gallery Talks
        • Short Course
    • DOCENT COUNCIL >
      • Docent Council Archive
    • DOCENT HANDBOOK
    • DOCENT ROSTER 2019-20 >
      • DOCENT EMERITUS
    • DOCENT TRAINING SUMMER 2020
    • TRAINING RECAPS
    • DOCENT APPLICATION
    • DOCENT PHOTOS >
      • THE DOCENT WALL
      • DOCENT EMERITUS PHOTOS
      • FIELD TRIPS
      • DOCENT PRESENTATION PICS 2016
    • DOCENT EXHIBITION AND MORE >
      • DOCENT EXHIBITION 2016 >
        • JOURNEY THROUGH THE COLLECTION PHOTOS
      • DOCENT EXHIBITION/FAMILY FUN DAY
  • MPS Tours, Archives
    • Becoming Alabama Curriculum Guide
    • MPS KINDERGARTEN PROGRAM 2020 >
      • KINDERGARTEN MOVE WITH ME
      • Gallery Stop Stations 2020
    • KINDERGARTEN ARCHIVES >
      • ART OF BAKING AUDIO LINK
      • CAKEWALK STATIONS
      • CAKEWALK SCRIPT IDEAS
    • FIFTH GRADE TOUR LESSON PLANS >
      • MPS AMERICAN SCENE 5TH GRADE TOUR >
        • TOUR OVERVIEW
        • TOUR STRUCTURE
        • TOUR CATEGORIES
        • OUTREACH
        • CURRICULUM GUIDE
        • STUDIO
        • ARTWORKS
        • CONTENT STANDARDS
        • VOCABULARY
  • BLOG
  • RESOURCES
    • VIDEOS
    • TOURING STRATEGIES
    • GENERAL BACKGROUND
    • EXHIBITION BACKGROUND
  • ARCHIVES, VARIOUS
    • Welcome Angie Dodson
    • DOCENT GRADUATION 2017
    • DOCENT TRAINING ARCHIVES >
      • 2017-18 Training Materials >
        • August 13, 2018 >
          • MoMA Interactive: What is a Print?
          • FRANK STELLA PRINTS
        • August 28, 2017 >
          • MPS 5 Addendum Group 1
        • Early American Portraits and 19th Century Still Life
        • October 30, 2017 >
          • 19th Century Genre Painting and Realism
        • November 6, 2017 >
          • Uncommon Territory
        • November 13, 2017 >
          • VTS Video
        • November 6 and 13 Recap
      • NEW DOCENT PRESENTATIONS 2017
      • 2016 First Docent Training Pics
    • GRADUATION 2015
    • RIVER REGION VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR
    • SUMMER ENRICHMENT 2017
    • EXHIBITION IMAGES, ARCHIVED
    • EXHIBITION ARCHIVES >
      • PRESENT EXHIBITIONS
      • 1917-2017: A Century of U.S. Airpower from the Air Force Art Collection
      • Beth Lipman Label Copy
      • Beth Lipman
      • Dinner Bell
      • Frank Stella Prints: A Retrospective
      • Hans Grohs and the Dance of Death
      • Lynn Saville
      • Nature, Tradition and Innovation: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Gordon Brodfueher Collection
      • Pairs and Partners >
        • Pairs and Partners
      • Photorealism
      • Rodin: Realism, Fragments, and Abstraction
      • Sewn Together: Two Centuries of Alabama Quilts
      • Taking it to the Streets
      • Women's Work
    • OLLI, ARCHIVES
    • SHORT COURSE ARCHIVES >
      • DOCENT SHORT COURSE, Spring 2015
  • TOUR PHOTOS
    • MONTGOMERY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY
  • Docent Personal Event Page
    • BOCQUIN BABY SHOWER
    • Wanica Means in Baptist Commercial
    • Murphy Smith Wedding Reception
  • OLLI Course Schedule
  • Link Page

Getting to know the New Docents

4/26/2016

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The new docents of the 2015-16 class have already taken active roles in assisting with Outreach, Studio, Artworks, and Gallery tours, and now they are in the midst of their year-end presentations to the museum staff and active docents.  Those presentations have been innovative, enlightening, and entertaining and we are looking forward to incorporating this diverse and talented group into the active docent corps. 

My conversations with the new docents are summarized below:
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​Maria Freedman
Maria came to Montgomery in 1995, by way of Germany and Illinois.  She was an art teacher for 40 years, and, during that time, taught a weekend workshop for children at the MMFA and participated annually in the Flimp Festival.  She retired in May 2015 and is looking forward to having more time to work on her own art, but, she says, she still needs structure in her day, so in addition to being a new docent, she assists with the Respite Program at First United Methodist Church and is a member of the Selma Art Guild.
 

Frank Gitschier
A graduate of the University of Louisville, where he was a second string All-American football player, Frank spent 34 years working for the Alabama Legislative Fiscal Office before retiring in 2012.  Alice Novak and Jill Barry, whom he met at a dinner party, recruited him into the docent program.  A firm believer in the maxim that “a picture is worth a 1,000 words,” he loves leading gallery talks, but is scared (he claims) of leading a studio lesson.
 
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Meg Hall        
Before moving to Montgomery in 1996, Meg, who has a master’s degree in social work,
lived in Wisconsin and in Auburn, working with children, disabled persons, and the elderly. She also earned a second-degree black belt in karate. In Montgomery, she worked in the Golf Shop at Wynlakes Country Club. Just as she was leaving her employment there, she heard about the docent program from Alice Novak’s friend Foad, a massage therapist at Mind and Body Holistic Spa in Cloverdale. Meg’s favorite part of the docent program is the people. She loves working with children, and helping with artworks and studio.
 
Evelyn Jackson
Evelyn has operated several small businesses centered on flowers and plants.  Now she is a Spanish language interpreter and translator.  She says that she needed – and found – a new direction in her life when a friend recommended the docent program to her.  Not surprisingly for someone with a degree in English literature, she believes that art is evocative of the range of human experience and she finds herself looking at art in verbal terms.
 
Nam Jung Kim
With a master’s degree in business administration, Nam spent 20 years in marketing.  When she and her family moved to Montgomery, she visited the museum and found it to be a  “peaceful and comfortable” place. She called Alice, offering to do marketing work for the museum and was persuaded to become a docent, which, she said, has turned out to be a wonderful way of getting to know Americans and being part of a community.
                                                                                                              
Wanica Means
After living in San Francisco during her working life (which included being a model), Wanica moved to Montgomery to be near family and to be in a place where the cost of living was reasonable.   She reinvented herself by starting an etiquette consulting firm and, along with active docent Phyllis Hall, formed a women’s social club – “Fit and Fun and Fifty Plus.”  When Phyllis suggested that she become a docent, Wanica responded, “Free art history class every week?  Count me in!”  Like Nam, she has found a sense of community in the docent program. 
 
Nicki Rupe
Before coming to Alabama, Nicki spent most of her years in California, where she served as the executive secretary to CEOs of biotech companies and to Senator Dianne Feinstein.  Here in Montgomery, she has re-launched a business, begun in California, as a professional organizer and home stager.  She has always considered playing a role in an art museum, perhaps because she understands that she, like an artist with a blank canvas, “has a passion to create something beautiful from what seems like mayhem.”  She believes that the docent program has given her a more discerning eye to appreciate the masterpieces that grace walls of the museum and she is grateful that the MMFA reaches out to the community to share its treasures.
 
Marilyn Simpson
Marilyn spent 42 years in higher education in California, Virginia, and Alabama.  When she left the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service in 2001, she resolved to start on her bucket list, part of which was to become a museum docent.  During her travels, she had visited many museums and had found them to be lovely, well-maintained places filled with beautiful things.  She decided that her retirement years were going to be surrounded by beauty and the docent program has helped her accomplish that goal.  She says, “What could be better than a year filled with a free education in art and beauty?
 
Gretchen Sippial
Alice’s friend Foad at Mind and Body Holistic Spa recruited Gretchen’s husband to be a docent, and, when her husband indicated that he was not interested, Gretchen jumped at the chance.  (Sounds like Foad should be an honorary docent!).  Despite having an undergraduate degree in art, she was not inspired, she says, by her own work and decided to pursue other careers – in management, construction, and higher education.  Now, however, she has come full circle and is inspired by the art she is learning about here at the MMFA.
 
Carroll Thompson     
Carroll was born and raised in Memphis and is a graduate of Rhodes College (formerly Southwestern at Memphis), where she majored in fiber arts.  Her three lifelong interests have been theater, dance, and art.  She has taught ballet and loves doing art projects with children.  She came to the docent program through her friend, active docent Carol Tew.  Carroll loves “art history Mondays” and enjoys being part of the docent community at the MMFA .
 
Mary Lil Owens
New Docent Representative
 
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Welcome Back Docents!

8/18/2015

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August 17 marked the first day of Docent Training with 37 in attendance, which included seven new docents and two visitors.  Top picture:  Docents in the studio while Donna Pickens, Asst. Curator of Education, discusses the  Montgomery Public Schools Outreach Program>  Bottom picture:  Curator, Jennifer Jankauskas gave docents an in depth look at the Maltby Sykes exhibition, A Witness to His Time.

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How I learned to stop hating and love museums | Nick Gray | TEDxFoggyBottom

6/10/2015

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Camp Sunshine Shines On

6/4/2015

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The MMFA staff are always pleased to see “Camp Sunshine Wednesday” roll around on our calendars because it means the presence in our galleries and studios of some lovely, and very special, people.  Camp Sunshine is a long-standing tradition now in our community, serving many elementary school-age girls who would not otherwise have the opportunity to experience summer camp activities. (At left: Wanda Horsley provides an introduction to paintings in the gallery for Camp Sunshine campers.)

Camp Sunshine visited the Museum this year on Wednesday, June 6. This marks the first year for Camp Sunshine at the Museum under the direct leadership of the Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama here in Montgomery. The anticipation of the girls who participate in the program is always high when they reach the Museum, and this year was no different.  Welcomed and led by our talented Museum docents Gloria Simons, Wanda Horsley, Paula Murphy, Grace Cook, Pam Moulton, and Penny Thompson, the campers toured the galleries for a look at the permanent collection, followed by time in both the ArtWorks galleries and the studio. They each created a “tissue vase” collage while they were here to take away from their visit. 

We offer our congratulations to the Girl Scouts in Montgomery, to the Camp Sunshine staff, and to our own great volunteer docents who do such a wonderful job of introducing Camp Sunshine to one of Montgomery’s greatest resources in the arts—their hometown Museum.

Margaret Lynne Ausfeld
Curator of Art

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Docents Visit Birmingham Museum of Art's Small Treasures

3/27/2015

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Twenty MMFA Docents and staff visited The Birmingham Museum of Art on Friday, March 20, 2015 to view the exhibition, Small Treasures:  Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Their Contemporaries.
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Art of Baking Puppet Show

2/6/2015

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Docents who love the puppet show - the Art of Baking Puppet Show audio file is attached for your listening pleasure! 
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Baptism Scenes in the Weil Print Collection

2/5/2015

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The docents enjoyed an inspirational session comparing these two prints of the same subject from the Weil Collection.
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Martin Schongauer Baptism of Christ 1480 - 90
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Lucas Van Leyden
The Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan 1510 
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Romantic Spirits

4/22/2014

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INTRODUCTION

The current exhibition, Romantic Spirits: 19th Century Paintings of the South from the Johnson Collection, addresses four major themes related to romanticism and the south: Heroic Individual, Personal Chivalric Code of Honor, Sublime in Nature, and Inevitability of Change. The themes are addressed in the exhibition catalog written by Estill Curtis Pennington.

EARLY DEFINITION OF ROMANTICISM

EDMUND BURKE
Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Source)


OF THE SUBLIME
WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.

IMMANUEL KANT
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime | Critique of Judgment (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

ANALYTIC OF BEAUTY (KANT)
While the sublime is formless, Kant defines beauty as having a particular form. The "judgment of beauty" is subjective, but differs from other types of judgments. In the case of beauty, we don't rely on reason or agreement to determine what is beautiful. Rather, we presuppose that our subjective judgments of beauty are universal or 
"a priori."

BASIC DEFINITION OF ROMANTICISM

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.
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Romanticism (Birmingham Museum of Art)
A 19th-century movement in the arts that prized human feelings, imagination, and expression.

BRIDGING THE GAP

Immanuel Kant provides a definition of aesthetic judgment that can be used as a guide for building discussions in the gallery.

Romanticism, when related to the major themes of the exhibition, can be defined as representations in art that elude our conceptual foundations. This closely resembles what Kant referred to as "aesthetic judgment." In other words, a painting may reveal certain objective details, but our concepts, our subjective judgments, for grasping their meaning elude our comprehension. Instead, the naturalism and realistic depictions of nature and scenes from everyday life engender ideas that are amorphous - encompassing larger issues (e.g. the Civil War, Manifest Destiny, Reconstruction, and Transcendentalism). 


From romantic vistas to dramatic moments -whether of the domestic sphere or the Civil War - the unifying themes are mood and feeling, with an emphasis placed on the individual and the subjective.

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The mmfa gets a new face

1/31/2014

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After months of planning, the Museum officially launched the new website on Thursday, January 30th. The website is responsive, which enables the site to adapt to various platforms like mobile phones and tablets. We would love to get your feedback!
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Ida kohlmeyer

11/25/2013

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The following image provides a link to a lecture by Ida Kohlmeyer. In the video, Kohlmeyer mentions her earlier influences (Rothko and Hoffman). Restrictions are placed on the video in terms of embedding, so I had to link directly to the video on Vimeo (I did download it for off-line use) to be played later for docents.
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