Art Show at Local Art Gallery!

Every year the Elementary Schools in my old district would find a local Art Gallery and ask if they would be interested in hosting our Elementary Art Show.  Most small art galleries are super excited to have us.  This last year was a great success.  We had families that had gone home  to dress-up for the reception.  There were fathers who brought flowers for their daughters.  Though I think my favorite part of the event was a complete accident.  Turns out that we had a family that had one student at my building and her brother went to one of the other elementary schools. (I know this seems weird, but I promise it makes sense to the situation) Somehow, by complete chance I picked a piece by my student and the other elementary teacher picked her brother.  I didn't realize this until they took family pictures by both of the student's artwork!  They were one of the families that dressed up, brought a camera, and their grandparents!  It was great to see how happy and proud everyone was.  It was beautiful.




Breakdown of having a Gallery Art Show instead of a show in the Building:

Pros:
- It's great to see kids bring their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles to show off their hard work.
- We involve the community past our Elementary buildings.
- We involve the community with a great Art Gallery.
- Kids, parents, and community get to see student work in a REAL gallery and not just hung in the hall (though that is awesome too!)

Cons:
- The galleries around our area are small and can only hold a small amount of artwork.  Each art teacher brings 10-15 pieces totally 50-75 total projects out of about 2,000 students.

Words of Wisdom (Things we Learned):
- Always have free food at the reception.  Cookies, punch, trail mix - ask each PTO to donate something to the reception.
- Make sure to give families the dates, times, address of the show and reception.  Try and give this about two weeks in advance - too early and it gets forgotten in the busy lives of families, too late and their schedules are full.
- Find an Art Gallery that is as close to your community as possible to make it easier on families and other community members to stop by.
- Try and have the show on display over a weekend or two to provide extra opportunities for community members and families to attend.
- Take pictures of the reception.
- Have the reception start about 10 minutes after school gets out so people can stop on their way to activities or home.
- Thank the Gallery
- Clean up after both the reception and the tear down of the show.

And of course no one else joins in my 'silly face' picture!