Art classes take trip to San Francisco

By Annabelle Zhou,
Bluedevilhub.com Editor–

The art history and art classes took a field trip to the de Young Museum in San Francisco on Tuesday, Dec. 1.

Art history teacher Doug Wright heads the annual expedition. The trip is optional, and offered first to his art history classes and then to other art students on a first-come first-serve basis.

“We’ve got a third of the campus taking art classes; I can’t take 500 kids to San Francisco in one trip,” Wright explained.

Sophomore Olivia O’Keeffe is an art student who took advantage of an opportunity to learn and have a good time.

She enjoyed the mixture of art classes on the trip as it allowed her to “hang out with people I otherwise would not have been able to.”

“I think it was a really good experience that enhanced the art education of the students,” O’Keeffe said.

For both art and art history students alike, artwork in the de Young museum left an impression.

“In art history class we’re constantly just looking at art up on a slide and I think people get a good framework but when you go and actually see a work of art in its actual environment […] you kind of get the sense for the size of it and you start to have more of a relationship with it,” Wright said. “It’s really hard to really fully appreciate art until you can begin that relationship.”

Junior and art history student Jenna Baker enjoyed the perspective the trip offered.

“Art is really cool to see because you get to see how people express things differently,” she said.

Aside from visiting the museum itself, students were also allowed to visit the Golden Gate Park and nearby Japanese Tea Garden.

Wright recognizes that students miss schoolwork, and makes the trip optional to compensate.

“I don’t want them to feel like they have to go and they have to miss school. I think students nowadays tend to miss too much school,” Wright said.

Another field trip is planned in May to the Museum of Modern Art. While the de Young has been an annual tradition, this trip is new this year due to MoMA’s 2016 reopening.

“The de Young we do in the fall because it’s more of a wide range of art that’s shown there from many different regions and different time periods; it’s a good kind of overview and by the time we get to spring we’ve probably covered modern art, things like that, so when we go to the Museum of Modern Art we can better enjoy that art,” Wright said.