We invite you to practice observation, deep thinking, and close looking with Museum Educators as your guide. Learners of all ages will engage in discovery through discussions from the Educator’s unique perspectives, making meaningful connections to art.
Themes are inspired by Sarah Crowner: Around Orange and Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis. Tours last approximately 45 minutes. A list of dates and themes are below and are subject to change based on the availability of the Educator. Keep checking back for new dates!
List of Tours:
Let’s get creative! Exploring the permanent collection through composition led by Bristol
In this tour, visitors have the opportunity to creatively engage through photography. The tour starts with a crash course on composition and a discussion on what makes a quality, captivating composition. We will examine each work in the Pulitzer’s permanent collection: Scott Burton’s Rock Settee, Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue Black, and Richard Serra’s Joe. Visitors will be able to spend time capturing the beauty of these works, as well as learning how the physical space and lighting of the Pulitzer can be used as compositional elements. This is meant to be a fun, relaxed, and introductory tour for all ages. We will primarily use smartphones, but other cameras are welcome! If you would prefer to explore composition through sketching, supplies will be provided. Remember to use no flash!
Dates:
Fri, Nov 3; 1:00pm
Fri, Dec 1; 1:00pm
Sat, Dec 9; 2:00pm
Fri, Dec 15; 12:00pm
Who Am We? led by Endie
What is art? What makes something art? In “Who Am We?” Museum Educator Endie explores and questions the notion of art through an exploration of Sarah Crowner: Around Orange and Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis. We will ask big questions: is artwork a final product? Or is it something greater?
Dates:
Fri, Dec 8; 3:00pm
Sat, Dec 16; 12:00pm
Sun, Dec 17; 12:00pm
Fri, Dec 29; 2:00pm
Process, Material, & Labor led by Haley
Have you ever been in a museum and thought “I could make that?” Haley, a St. Louis based artist and builder, is interested in expanding that question. Her thematic tour centers on Process, Material, & Labor connecting the common and rare construction processes on view in Urban Archeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis with the geometric abstraction of Sarah Crowner’s new pieces in Around Orange.
Dates:
Sat, Nov 18; 11am
Sun, Nov 19; 11am
Thr, Nov 30; 11am
Thr, Dec 7; 11am
Thr, Dec 7; 2pm
From Blue Black to Orange led by Karla
In this tour, you are encouraged to rethink your relationship with abstract art. Around each art piece visitors will practice drawing using Kelly’s famous technique of “transcribing” the designs and structural essences of other random, found objects. Then, through a conversation between Sarah Crowner’s Untitled (Around Orange) and Ellsworth Kelly’s monumental wall sculpture Blue Black educator Karla will explain how abstraction is a gateway to a deeper relationship with objects and with space.
Dates:
Sun, Oct 29; 11:00am
Sun, Nov 12, 11:00am
Sun, Nov 26; 11:00am
Sun, Dec 10; 11:00am
How I See It: Ellsworth Kelly and Abstraction led by Kennedy
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was in many ways a founding father of abstraction in the 20th and 21st centuries. Sarah Crowner: Around Orange draws in part from his legacy and interfaces with three of his works. Abstract art does not aim to reproduce reality and relies upon shape, color, form, and line, which are also foundational to Crowner’s and Kelly’s painted art objects. On this thematic tour, audiences will engage in close looking exercises that introduce abstraction as both an artistic movement and as Kelly’s career-guiding philosophy, and then will have the chance to create small-scale abstract artworks of their own.
Dates:
Sun, Nov 12; 1:30pm
Sun, Nov 19; 1:30pm
Sun, Dec 3; 1:30pm
Sun, Dec 10; 1:30pm
Spacetime and Temporality led by Kris
This tour focuses on spacetime and temporality. Whether sitting by the reflecting pool, watching chinkapin oak leaves fall in the Tree Grove, or traversing the main gallery, the Pulitzer creates a sense of quiet suspension, but also dynamic change. In this tour, visitors are encouraged to walk inside and alongside artwork, considering their personal experience of time and space in the museum setting. In Sarah Crowner: Around Orange, visitors will consider scale and physicality. In Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis, visitors will encounter building fragments that reflect the history of St. Louis—but also grander cultural and natural histories ranging from Mississippian craftwork to dinosaur fossils. Ultimately, this tour asks museumgoers to consider what it means to linger, pass by, move through.
Dates:
Sat, Oct 28; 12:00pm
Thr, Nov 9; 12:00pm
Fri, Nov 10; 12:00pm
Sat, Nov 11; 12:00pm
Sat, Dec 9; 12:00pm
Untold Stories: When what’s left behind isn’t what remains led by Kristen Olivia
This tour explores the untold stories behind some of the objects in Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis. Looking only at an object in front of us cannot tell us the whole story. Who came in and out of the doors of the building this piece belongs to? Whose story is untold here by only viewing an object? From orphans in the mid-20th century, to famous Black musicians of the 20th century, to residents of a housing project, this tour will reopen a closed book. If you constantly find yourself wanting to learn more about what you’re looking at, this tour is right for you.
Dates:
Sat, Nov 11; 10:30am
Sat, Dec 2; 11:00am
Sat, Dec 2; 1:00pm
Gardens Galore led by Mary Kate
What does dwarf bamboo have to do with art? Is there rock furniture in your garden? Join Mary Kate in the search for other serendipitous items found in local gardens. In this tour, participants will explore the role of natural inspirations in art on view in exhibition Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis and Tadao Ando’s architectural intentions for the Pulitzer building. Whether you are a lover of parks or wonder how your green thumb makes you an artist, then this tour is for you!
Dates:
Fri, Nov 24; 11:00am
Fri, Nov 24; 1:00pm
Thr, Dec 28; 11:00am
