Two 5th grade student exhibitions were shown in Connecticut in 2020. Website visitors can see a slideshow of the exhibition at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury and view a gallery of pictures from the KidsPlay Children’s Museum in Torrington.
Mattatuck Museum Waterbury CT
Dr. Robert Beck narrates Picturing Peace, an exhibition of youth artwork from the community-oriented, intensive vocabulary and visual educational program he and his wife, Dr. Jill Beck created as an emotional healing response to the Columbine mass shooting and 9/11. The science of socio-emotional development argues that the best method for improving peaceful feelings is through vocabulary and the arts. In Picturing Peace, students are taught several synonyms of peace such as calm, friendly, caring, and unity, and then use the arts, photography, dramatic studio movement, and writing to visualize the situations in which peace occurs. As part of the Mattatuck’s exhibition, students from Waterbury’s Maloney & Rotella schools participated in a seven-week program to learn how to translate words into pictures and to express the feelings and values associated with peace as moral ideas. Their pictures and words instruct people on how they should act ideally if they are to keep the peace. While pictures are said to be worth a thousand words, consider also that these young photographers visualize peace in many different ways.
