(10 min) Do this visual thinking strategy

(written if individual, aloud and then written about afterward if with a partner or group) on an artwork of your choice.  Spend 10 minutes with one artwork without looking up additional information.

Visual Thinking Strategies approach:

1) What’s going on in this piece?
2) What do you see that makes you say that?
3) What more can we find?
Repeat. 
Facilitator role is to never add any new information, but to highlight what has been said and forge connections to what someone else said, raise questions about any similarities, differences, and keep pushing on the “what makes you say that?” and “what more can we find?”

Individual art looking exercises (50 min):

Choose 5 activities from below. Each activity should take about 10 minutes. 

Look at a piece for 7 minutes without specifically asking yourself anything (set a vibrate timer on your phone so you don’t keep checking the time).  Write for 3 minutes about what that experience was like.

Look at 1 piece for 30 seconds then sketch it.  Look at another for 30 seconds and write about it.  Look at another for 2 minutes. Alternate adding to your sketch, shorter looking and longer looking and writing about it for ten minutes. Reflect on the different kinds of thinking involved. 

Find the piece in a room that interests you least.  Look at it and free-write on your thinking/emotional reactions about it for ten minutes.

Divide a piece of paper in half.  One half says  “What I see”  the other “What it means.”  Look at a work of art and spend ten minutes generating these questions.

Generate as many questions as you can about 1 piece of art in 10 minutes.

Choose two art pieces and write about possible connections between them.

Spend 10 minutes writing about the curation of an exhibition–what connects the pieces, why and how do individual pieces.

Imagine yourself physically inside the piece.  What do you see from different angles?  What captures your attention. Sketch and write your responses.  Move around inside the piece and sketch and write your perspective.

Find a work that connects to speaks to you in a subjective way about a feeling, experience or emotion.  Spend 5 minutes thinking/writing about that personal connection (you can choose not to share this part with the group/me). Now treat the work more formally (e.g., themes, technique, subject matter). Reflect on the different ways of thinking and engaging.

Find a work and write down everything that it reminds you of no matter how ridiculous or idiosyncratic for 3 minutes.  Now treat the work more traditionally (describe subject matter, themes, techniques, historical context etc.) and see if there are any connections with your more idiosyncratic memories.