Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Teacher Institute 2016-2017
A year long residency that engaged Chicago area teachers to discuss art as a lens to present larger topics. This year long collaboration manifested in the creation and implementation of a socially engaged artistic practice. The catalyst for our shared connection with socially engaged art was the exhibition The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music. Through this residency I developed a unit “Reflections on Privilege and Oppression”, where students discussed the ways in which each of them experience privilege and how to use that privileged space to advocate for somebody else. This lesson was given as part of the Interpretations and Making class from Wolcott College Prep.
In my project Reflections on Privilege +Oppression students discussed how individuals can benefit from privileges, while simultaneously being a member of an oppressed group. We considered how the role of artist is a role of privilege, allowing us to create a space for people to reflect, respond, and react. For this socially engaged project, students created work reflecting on privilege and considered the perspectives of different oppressed groups.
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Goals and Objectives
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To use art to make people think about their own privilege, and to to engage them in conversations about oppressed individuals.
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To help students understand the ways in which they are privileged, or not, and then to use that understanding to help others through artmaking.
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Guiding questions
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In what ways are you privileged?
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In what ways are you oppressed?
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How can you use your privilege to assist others?
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Why is it important to view the world from the perspective of others?​
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MATERIALS
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Computer, projector, whiteboard, markers
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Material listed by students in their project proposals
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REFERENCES + RESOURCES
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Candy Chang, I Wish This Was
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Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
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Pablo Helguera, Education for Socially Engaged Art
Learning Activities
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Visit the MCA Chicago. Students participate in conversations about the Stan Douglas and John Preus installations.
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Class discussion of artists, videos, and popular culture that engage with a dialogue about privilege.
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Prompt a discussion about intersectionality by making a list of ways an individual is privileged and then a list of ways they are oppressed.
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Ball throwing activity: Each student was given a ball of paper, lined up, and told that they had to throw the ball into the thrash can to receive a prize.
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Follow up on this activity with a discussion of how the activity is a manifestation of privilege.
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Read Pablo Helguera’s Education for Socially Engaged Art
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Read Peggy McIntosh’s "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
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Prompt: Consider one of your privileged identities — How do you benefit from it?
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Critique: The critique panel consisted of Wolcott School faculty members who pretended to be faculty from other schools. Students had to present their work, justify why these projects matter, and explain why the “visiting” faculty should implement these projects in their own schools.
This student wanted to create an installation that dealt with mental illness. The paint represented “triggers” and the participant had to walk over the work and reflect how they moved through the piece to consider the experience of an individual with mental illness.
