More to discover at TMAG in 2011

January Holiday program- more than just a ‘kids show’

The adage that it takes a village to raise a child is never more apparent than during holiday program times at TMAG. Anyone in the galleries over the last few weeks will have seen lots of engagement from young and old in our ‘International Year of the Forests’ program. The Inside Outside Tree program brought together our team’s art and biodiversity skills to engage parents and children of all ages. As Ruth said “the kids don’t realize that they are learning some of the time because we’ve reduced the ‘talking head’ part and increased the observational and drawing aspects, yet there they are drawing insects with six legs, spiders with eight, segmented bodies and fixing them onto a tree showing habitat relationships” All with lots of laughter and discovery.

Going Batty with Richard’s bat program was another highlight and included games, fascinating specimens and a ‘bat detector’ borrowed from Parks. Lots of positive comments about the programming being in the galleries, bring a real life to the spaces over these two weeks.

Learning and Discovery program 2011

As you can imagine this year is a moving feast, with gallery closures seeing CLD rethinking programs, moving program delivery spaces and dropping some themes in our offer to schools and adult learning. Loan and online services will continue, including the introduction of ‘Activity backpacks’ for families to use, an Art Loan box from the National Gallery of Australia in September and the first full year of the Ice Box Antarctic resource. Plus the Australian War Memorial boxes and the Zoological loan spemimens.

New programming will be introduced this year, including ‘Eye Spy’ a dynamic program for young children and adults to explore, enjoy and learn about the museum together. Star/dust will be launched in March (more below) and an ‘Art Cart’ and a ‘Museum Cart’ will both be in development this year. The AccessArt Risdon Prison program is ending its first phase and being evaluated this month, with possible phase two later in the Year. Outreach will take the team to the North West of the state in first term, utilizing the Move video art in schools resource. Look out for the new schools brochure in early March detailing programming as well as the new website where CLD has the most extensive presence of any TMAG department!

Star/dust focus.

Not your everyday exhibition program, Star/dust sees TMAG rethink the classic ‘Art exhibition’ development model placing interactive and engaged public programming at the forefront. Three featured Tasmanian artists are working on installations and visitor programming with our AccessArt team of educators along side art curators. Expect shows with visitors actively engaged with the artworks. Lucy Bleach’s Volcano Lover will have an interactive ‘lab’ at its core, with the occasional ‘explosive’ public program and science demonstrations. Again, check out the website and the brochure being launched soon

Art Bikes

The Art Bikes are going strong thanks to the front of house staff who have also made some suggestions on modifications to the crate which have all now been implemented. The bikes are out every day, often in multiple loans per day. Some rough statistics from the first month of operations: 70% of ARTBIKES participants were interstate visitors, 26% were from overseas and 4% Tasmanian art lovers. The age of the ARTBIKES explorer ranged from 22 to 42 years of age.