The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

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Artmobile Focuses on Photography

Artmobile Focuses on Photography

A new exhibition at the Artmobile promises to give visitors insight about the art of photography. Now until June the Artmobile will be home to an exhibition called, “Not Just Another Reality Show.”

The exhibition explores the concepts of truth and fiction and reality and fantasy in photography. The exhibition contains original works by 29 contemporary photographers.

“The last photography exhibition was in 1989. Since then photography has changed a lot. It was time to show the revolution of digital photography and what it has done to the medium,” said Fran Orlando, the director of the Artmobile and the Hicks Art Center Gallery.

The exhibition is aimed at showing visitors that photographers have to make many choices in order to produce their work. The photographer decides on the lighting, type of film, point of view, and perspective.

The Art Mobile visits schools and public sites in Bucks County. It has been in existence for 28 years.

The Art Mobile is a museum for students in grades kindergarten through 12. It has many hands-on activities which include jigsaw puzzles, cropping, and digitally changing photographs on a computer.

The activity called the portrait booth shows visitors how different lighting may change the appearances of facial features on the person sitting in the booth. The hands on activities offer a unique way of looking at art.

“Our mission is to provide a museum experience at school. The quality of the art in the Artmobile is the same as a museum. However it is not in the context of a museum. It is much more relaxed. Everyone responds to it,” remarked Orlando.

A ot of planning goes into deciding on an exhibition. “We send out surveys to teachers from schools where the Artmobile has previously visited. Then we find a curator to select the artwork for the exhibition. The curator gets the works of art together,” said Orlando.

This year’s curator is Stephen Perloff. He is a photographer and the editor of The Photo Review.

“We also put together a teachers’ manual,” remarked Orlando. The manual provides pre and post-visit activities to get the students thinking about the art they encounter. This allows schools to integrate arts with the core curriculum.

Each class goes through the Artmobile individually. An Artmobile Educator gives each class a 40-minute presentation of the exhibition. “The presentations are more of a dialogue between the educator and the students. They are very interactive and promote the students to discuss what they are seeing,” said Orlando.

The students also get time to look at the art on their own. This is the time when they can experience all the art and activities.

The Artmobile has been a huge success. “So many schools wanted the Artmobile to visit them that we had to divert from a one year exhibition cycle to a two year cycle,” remarked Orlando. The two-year cycle is used so all that the schools will get to see the same exhibition.