In April of 2008 we all jumped on BART or drove our cars up to Mission Dolores in San Francisco where their curator, Andy Galvan, gave us a fascinating tour of the Mission's historic cemetery and the beautiful interior of Mission Dolores. Even though it was chilly and rainy, we all had a great time and warmed up with hot tea and Chinese food at a local restaurant, organized by Marciel Ingram.

Many of the docents and their spouses attended the Eye on the Sixties: Vision, Body, and Soul-themed reception at the Museum in April, followed by a gourmet dinner at the Adobe Lodge and a performance of "Hair" at the performing arts theater. It was a lot of fun and brought out a little bit of the "hippie" in all of us.

After a brief, but busy, summer break, we reconvened in September with a new list of guest speakers to keep us informed and entertained throughout the coming year. Our monthly meetings at the museum usually contain either a tour of the newest exhibit, or a guest speaker to keep us informed and on our toes.

Several docents met one morning in November at the Saratoga Historical Museum for a tour that had been organized by our Docent Emeritus, Laura Brickman. We followed this field trip with another one in January at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Fourteen of us met on the morning of January 22 for a docent lead tour of their exhibit Dürer to Picasso and a walk-through of some of their other exhibits as well. We stayed for lunch at the museum cafe. Our final field trip for this spring is being arranged by Laura, hopefully in late April, and our destination is the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

All of our tours of the de Saisset Museum and Mission Santa Clara and Mission gardens are enthusiastically received by the students and their teachers, and we continue to hear great compliments from them every week. Our program continues to thrive and is a great reward not only to the people who take our tours, but to the great docents who give of their time and talents.

Victoria Lance
Docent Chair



Explore with Me, Spring 2009

Spring 2009 marks the official six-year anniversary of the Explore with Me (EWM) student docent program at the de Saisset. Founded by Emily Lewis, SCU ’05, in conjunction with SCU Department of Art and Art History, the program is currently co-coordinated by students Hermione Sharp, Scott Dow, and Brianna Lewke. The EWM program is a course in which students receive two academic units, learn about the content of the exhibit, and give a minimum of three tours to the public. The program is an opportunity for students of all majors to engage in a museum internship and learn more about all aspects of working in a museum. With seven docents last quarter participating in the program, we met twice a week for four weeks in order to prepare the student docents for their tours. Requirements of the internship include a minimum of three docenting hours, participating in Museum-sponsored events, mentoring with Art and Art History faculty, a field trip to a local Bay Area museum, and a written visual analysis as well as a reflection paper.

 

Each student is assigned to an Art and Art History faculty member with whom they meet throughout the quarter. The collaboration between the de Saisset and the Art and Art History Department, as well as the involvement with other academic departments on campus, provides the docents with a firmly grounded educational experience.

 

The Winter 2009 shows, Natural Blunders and Flora and Fauna from the de Saisset Museum’s Permanent Collection, provided an excellent means of interaction between the EWM docents and the public during their tours. The Natural Blunders artists address the historically antagonist relationship between humans and nature, highlighting the recent trends toward cloning and aggressive breeding techniques, while the Flora and Fauna exhibit was curated by SCU’s biology department and is centered around images of nature and the human body.

 

As we prepare to graduate in June ‘09, we are concluding our five quarters of coordinating the EWM program. These have been a wonderful five quarters for the three of us, and though we are sad to leave the program, we are happy for EWM to continue in the Fall with Caitlin Adair, SCU ’10. We are still in the process of interviewing students to co-coordinate with Caitlin. The EWM program has been instrumental in all three of our collegiate lives, introducing us to faculty, friends and new opportunities. We thank you for the opportunity to serve the de Saisset Museum and the Santa Clara community. We also encourage you to support the EWM docent program and the Museum by coming to the galleries and taking a tour from one of our wonderful docents!

 

Scott Dow, ‘09

Brianna Lewke, ‘09

Hermione Sharp, ‘09

Explore with Me Program Coordinators