Out of the Past: Gen Z Responses to 20th Century Santa Monica

About

Out of the Past: Gen Z Responses to 20th Century Santa Monica
Exhibition | December 6 – 14, 2019
Reception | December 6, 2019 | 4 – 6 PM
18th Street Arts Center (Airport Campus) | North Gallery
3026 Airport Avenue Santa Monica, CA

In collaboration with 18th Street Arts Center and the Culture Mapping 90404 initiative, students in Amy Bouse’s AP Art classes at Santa Monica High School engaged in a weeks-long process of historical research, oral history collection, and exploration into Santa Monica’s past to create these culminating artworks. This exhibition is a window into how these young artists see their city, and their own role in its multivalent, complicated history.

As part of a program to create curriculum around 18th Street’s oral history map of the Pico Neighborhood of Santa Monica, the Center is working with teachers at Santa Monica High School to engage teenagers in local history research and exploration. Through the AP Art unit, students plumbed the depths of publicly available local history resources and image archives through the Santa Monica Library, and exercised best practices of oral history collection in order to create their final artworks. This curriculum, which was collaboratively developed by 18th Street Arts Center and teacher Amy Bouse, will be published online after being taught in the classroom. This collaborative process will yield a curriculum that is engaged, useful, practical, and shaped by the students that participated in it. Future collaborations with the History and African-American Studies departments at the school are in the works for 2020.

This collaboration and exhibition was generously supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Special thanks to Amy Bouse, Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson, and Kathy Lo.