Making A Connection With The Art World

By Shannon Hicks

If anyone is happy to finally have the school year concluded, it is Lisa DiCostanzo. The 1999-2000 school year was a busy one for the senior, who joined her 254 fellow classmates last Friday afternoon in receiving a diploma during the graduation ceremony at Newtown High School.

Since last fall, Lisa has played on lacrosse and basketball teams, and worked part-time at Big Y in Newtown, all while keeping up with her studies. She also, since last October, has been working in the intern and docent programs at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield.

Interns at the Aldrich Museum work closely with staff members on independent and collaborative projects. For Lisa, this meant working with Aldrich educator Melanie Zalman. The internship was arranged through the Danbury-based organization The Education Connection, which handled paying Lisa for her time when she was working at the museum.

The Education Connection maintains contacts with regional companies and organizations and can help students and companies make compatible matches, coming up with combinations that will put students into a related field they intend to continue studying. For Lisa, it was a matter of being introduced to the education department at the Aldrich, and then becoming involved with its student docent program.

The Aldrich already has a large number of such programs for students; its educational offerings, especially under the guidance of education curator Nina Carlson and museum educator/internship coordinator Melanie Zalman, continue to expand. Internships are available in public affairs, education, cultural programs, general administration, and archives/library. Students can even earn academic credit for their participation in the internship program.

Lisa began by visiting the museum on Monday afternoons, when the building was closed to the public but open for staff. She worked with the public relations department; the museum’s curators, who taught her how artwork is selected for shows, had her work with them while they viewed slides of artists’ work, “the whole choosing process,” Lisa said; and with the museum’s assistant director, Richard Klein, to learn the grants application process. By mid-October she was also going in to the museum on Thursdays after school.

Lisa worked primarily with Ms Zalman, and she spent a lot of time learning how to be a museum docent, or trained guide. Students learn everything about an exhibition — the Aldrich presents eight major shows each year — and can then lead educational tours through the collections for their classmates or younger students.

“By having us lead groups who are about the same age, it makes it a little more interesting for the students,” Lisa recently said. She worked at the Aldrich during its recent presentation, “Faith: The Impact of Judeo-Christian Religion on Art at the Millennium.” It was a difficult and daunting topic for many adults — an exploration of the complex ways in which contemporary artists examine and interpret Jewish and Christian religious traditions — but Lisa did not have a problem with it.

“It was an interesting exhibit,” said she.

Lisa had the opportunity to work with two groups of eighth grade students during her internship. Beginning in October, she would go in to the museum on Mondays and do office administrative work. By mid-October she began working on Thursdays with a group of seven students at the museum, and in the spring she worked with a second group, this one from Rogers Park Middle School in Danbury.

As each set of students finished their after-school work-study at the Aldrich, they had one-day field trips to the museum for tours of the exhibitions that were on view at the time. That was when Lisa’s newly-acquired docent skills came into play. When the eighth graders went on a field trip to the museum to see the Aldrich’s fall and spring exhibitions, Lisa even took days off from Newtown High in order to continue to work with them.

Now that summer is here, most students are looking forward to relaxing, at least a little bit, but not Lisa. She will be returning to Ridgefield for another internship before she leaves for Philadelphia University in late summer to begin her interior design studies.

“Melanie [Zalman] has a list of programs lined up, I know that much,” Lisa said. “There are interns coming in for the summer from across the country, so it will be interesting over there. I’d like to be able to help with some of the student art workshops, but honestly, I’ll be happy to do what they want, help wherever they need.”

“She has been a tremendous help to us,” said Aldrich museum educator Melanie Zalman. “Lisa is a really hard worker, and she has been working herself to the bone. And she has done very well with this program.”

“I’m not really sure exactly how this will help me,” Lisa admits, “but I think the experience of being surrounded by such — and so much — art will help me creatively. And now that I’ve been there, I see how other people think, and how artists express themselves.”

Being surrounded by art has also opened up Lisa’s creativity. Her writing and illustration channels, she says, are wide open.

“I have no idea how this will fit into the big picture, but it will definitely come together,” she said.