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| MAC gives students the opportunity to study art and work with arts professionals. |
The Museum of Arts & Culture is the realization of a long-standing goal of the New Rochelle Fund for Educational Excellence. The Fund, working closely with the school administration, faculty and the Board of Education, created the MAC not only to provide a museum experience for New Rochelle students in their own school district, but also to provide an important cultural asset for the community as a whole. The MAC features both student-generated artwork and traveling exhibitions, all of which is blended into the curriculum.
The MAC opened in October, 2006 with a special exhibit on loan from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Norman Rockwell in the 1940s: A View of the American Homefront. The exhibit was complemented by an original installation, Norman Rockwell’s New Rochelle Years, created by the MAC in collaboration with the New Rochelle Public Library. Soles of the Movement was the second traveling exhibit at the MAC. The installation, created by artist Chris Burns, used historical music, photographs, film footage and memorabilia — particularly shoes — to commemorate the Montgomery Bus Boycott and tell the story of the growth of the civil rights movement in America.
The spring 2007 calendar for the MAC included a variety of student shows, including the AP Art Concentration Show, a show by members of the National Art Honor Society , Visions, and individual shows by students in the W.I.S.E. program. Over the summer the MAC featured Greetings from New Rochelle, an original exhibit created in collaboration with the New Rochelle Public Library, and a summer film series, Queen City Cinema. This fall the MAC will host The Crews Family, an exhibit on loan from the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature. And on October 14th the MAC and the Partnership for the Huguenot Children's Library will co-sponsor a Festival of Children's Books (see Calendar for details). In addition, the MAC is working to establish a docent training program for students.
Donald Baughman
Theresa Kump Leghorn
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