It’s a Wednesday morning, and photography students from Canoga Park Senior High School are waving their arms like the ocean in a Getty Museum gallery.
The students have been following Yoon Kahm, a 25-year veteran of Getty’s docent program, in a winding path through the museum for the past 20 minutes, pausing to explore works of art both inside and outside. Kahm has now stopped at the nautical painting Van Tromp, going about to please his Masters, Ships a Sea, getting a Good Wetting by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Giggling a little, the teenagers follow Kahm’s request to “Make a wave!” imitating the rough water depicted in the painting. They ooh and aah as she points out a tiny bird in the foreground and explains how this painting exemplifies Romanticism, a late 18th- to mid-19th-century creative movement that emphasized emotion and nature over strict artistic rules and intellect.
The Getty Center has seen thousands of school groups come through its halls since it opened in 1997, but there’s something especially poignant about this tour. Canoga Park was one of the first schools to return to Getty for a field trip since the pandemic forced the Getty Center and Getty Villa to shut down to all visitors in 2020, eliminating field trips that had previously welcomed 150,000 students a year. School groups finally returned in early March 2022, to the relief and excitement of the docents, teachers, and students who were thankful to stroll among the art and gardens after two years of sitting behind computer screens.
“For the past two years school has been very stressful. We left middle school and started high school through a computer. Since we weren’t in a real classroom, I got distracted and used my phone whenever I wanted. Now that we are attending school in person, I feel much better and motivated to get up and get ready,” said Jennifer, a sophomore at Canoga Park. “I felt so happy and very grateful. It felt like an escape from reality.”
“I feel that after everything that has happened these past two years,” fellow student Elizabeth added. “We really needed to go on this field trip.”
From Field Trips to Digital Lessons (and Back)
Getty’s art education efforts didn’t stop while field trips were on pause. Instead, students participated in a new program called Getty Virtual Art Explorations, which offered 60-minute Zoom sessions with Getty educators and docents guiding students through close-looking exercises and conversations to connect with works of art in the collection. Getty educators also led teacher webinars about visual literacy and how to teach art during the pandemic.
While the virtual art classes were effective—Keishia Gu, head of education at Getty, said teachers reported that without the distraction of the public or noise, students could sometimes engage more deeply with the art—there’s nothing quite like standing in the presence of works that are hundreds of years old. As COVID case numbers began to drop and L.A. County social distancing requirements eased, Getty’s education team brainstormed how to bring students back safely.
That led to a few changes to tours, which will continue to evolve along with COVID conditions. Fewer schools will visit each day than before the pandemic. With smaller crowds of students, docents can be a bit more flexible about where they take their groups and how long they spend in each gallery.
Docents have temporarily stopped leading drawing exercises, which required them to pass out and collect pencils and papers (drawing exercises will begin again once restrictions are loosened). They now incorporate a technique Getty educators developed during the pandemic called “embodiment.” This strategy helps students get in touch with the spirit and feeling of a work of art by physically imitating it, with Kahm’s “ocean wave” exercise, for example.
“A breath of fresh air”
The scene at the Getty Center arrival plaza as the first student groups stepped off the tram was more akin to a celebration than a typical field trip for docents and Getty staff. One docent was so excited she threw her hands up in the air and shouted, “Here we go!” as she “practically clicked her heels,” Gu said.
“To actually have the kids physically back was very overwhelming for me,” Gu said. “My staff looked at me [when students first arrived] and said, ‘Are you crying?’ And I’m like, maybe…”
For teachers, taking a field trip to Getty felt like a sign that school was returning to normal and a welcome opportunity to give students the chance to learn outside the classroom (and computer). Canoga Park video production teacher Marjorie Hollander said she and her colleagues reached out to several museums in the L.A. area to schedule trips, but Getty was one of the only ones to respond.
Hollander said the Canoga Park students thoroughly enjoyed the field trip, and she appreciated that the docents allowed time for questions and student exploration of the artworks.
“As always, the students loved the garden,” Hollander said. “There were also connections to concepts they had learned in class—lighting in video production and photography—through the exhibits of Rembrandt and Imogen Cunningham.”
Canoga Park student Caitlyn described the Getty outing, her first field trip since the pandemic, as “refreshing.” When the pandemic started, she said she didn’t realize how challenging it would be.
“Working with online school and configuring Zoom was frustrating,” Caitlyn said. “Going on a field trip after the last two years felt like a breath of fresh air.”
