Since last November, Kruger worked with the students, teachers, and Getty staff to investigate core curricular themes of social justice, identity, race, gender, and advocacy. Classroom conversations and activities guided by Kruger drew out student voices and inspired powerful conversations around the project themes: Whose Values? Whose Justice? Whose Fears? Whose Hopes?
In addition to the large-scale artwork, visitors to the Getty Center will be able to respond to the project questions in a related interactive activity featuring a new take on tagging. Participants are invited to choose from four specially designed paper tags, write a response and share it as part of an evolving installation aimed at creating a collective expression of the complexity of viewpoints and experience alive in a global society.
The work is the result of lively and informative sessions that Kruger has conducted at Chatsworth Charter and Cleveland Humanities Magnet high schools as part of the Getty Artists Project, an annual program that engages artists in the Getty Museum’s education program. One artist is selected each year and given the freedom to select an audience to work with, and to develop the focus and format of their own project. “We want to invite artists to undertake innovative projects in collaboration with our Museum Education staff in order to explore new learning and public engagement opportunities,” said Elizabeth Escamilla, Acting Assistant Director for Museum Education.
Kruger, a Los Angeles and New York-based artist known for her large-scale and immersive image, text, and video installations that address provocative social, cultural, and political issues, was selected by the Museum’s education department as the 2014–2015 Getty Artists Program artist and encouraged to create and implement a project of her choosing, with the freedom to select her audience and develop the focus and format of the project.
Past Getty Artists Program participants include Mark Bradford (2010), Jennifer Steinkamp (2011), John Divola (2012), and Sam Durant (2013). More information about the Getty Artists Program, as well as summaries of past projects, can be found at the Getty Artists Program.
About Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger (American, born 1945) is an artist living in Los Angeles and New York. She attended Syracuse University’s School of Visual Arts and Parson’s School of Design in New York before working in magazine design and art direction at numerous publications, including Mademoiselle, House and Garden and Aperture. Her work offers evocative statements about power, sexuality, money, life and death.
Kruger’s work has been exhibited internationally at several museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). Kruger’s work has also appeared in several public spaces, including billboards, buses, posters, parks, and museum facades. She has taught at California Institute of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work has been most recently exhibited at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria.
About the Schools
Chatsworth Charter High School’s Humanitas Academy of Education and Human Service is a small learning community that has been developed by expanding the highly successful Humanitas Program that has existed for more than 20 years. The Humanitas Academy helps students gain an understanding of the socioeconomic, psychological and political foundations of society and explore how to use that information to meet human needs through education and human services. Through curriculum concentrated on themes relating to education and human services, students develop their own identities and explore careers in teaching, social work, special needs, psychology, health, counseling, and public service.
Established in 1981, Cleveland Humanities Magnet High School is the leading secondary school for the study of the Humanities in Los Angeles, and the model for Humanitas programs across the district. The magnet has a population of more than 850 students with a broad range of diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. This provides the opportunity to cultivate the development of critical thinkers through an interdisciplinary, thematic, writing-based Humanities curriculum and to foster an environment of social awareness and involvement in order to improve students’ lives and their local, national, and global communities. In the 11th grade, in particular, teachers use a Social Justice approach to American Studies. The aim is to question, research, and mutually discover ways to use power creatively and multidimensionally in pursing the ideals of Democracy for all members of our society.
The Academy of Art and Technology (AOAT) is a small learning community that is art-centered and focused on a technology-based education. Students participating in the Academy’s four-year program are trained in Graphic Design, Web Design and Illustration aspects of the Commercial Art profession. Through its rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum, AOAT delivers connected and engaging academic courses that meet all the A-G requirements and provides access to honors sections and Advanced Placement classes. The program also focuses on transferrable skills that are critical for student success during high school and after graduation, including communication skills, teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and time management. The goal is to provide students with the academic background and professional tools necessary for success in any endeavor. AOAT instills all students with a love of learning, civic responsibility, and the individual confidence to achieve their personal best.