Premiere Issue of Zeitgeist has finally arrived! Pick up the May 2009 issue, today!
Zeitgeist is a new monthly magazine geared towards to high school students. To receive issues, teachers can request a subscription for an entire school year. For $9.99, classrooms will get 10 issues of Zeitgeist, which will be scheduled to arrive the first week of each month.
Dear Art Teachers and Students:
It is with great pleasure that I bring you Zeitgeist. For years, public schools have been supplied with glossy, thin magazines to distribute to students and use as a teaching device. From personal experience, they were either too confusing or the administration failed to distribute them during the appropriate month. It was such an unfortunate occurrence that such learning materials were considered trivial and not properly planned into a students’ curriculum.
Having spent Kindergarten through senior year of high school in public schools focused on the arts, I had the privilege of receiving supplementary magazines focusing on the arts every month. Although this sounds like an improvement compared to my academic classes, several flaws still sneaked their way into my art classes. First, the magazines were written using vocabulary most students never heard. Even when a article looked fascinating, it would take way past the allotted class time to fully understand the thesis. Second, newer issues of the art magazines were almost impossible to find in classrooms. Teachers constantly reused the same October and Art in America issues from the 1980s. Although they were interesting, when I could understand them, it was frustrating that I could not read a magazine focusing on the art of my time. Having such little exposure to current art trends, I focused most of my art on traditional and classical examples since they were much easier to come across in books and magazines. Post-modern and contemporary art were almost foreign topics to me when I graduated high school.
It was not until college that I realized I knew almost nothing about mod-late 20th century art. This is when I got the idea to create Zeitgeist. This monthly magazine was to be distributed monthly to teachers of art classes of Junior High and High School levels. The narrow audience I am reaching is purposely done to lower costs, thus allowing me to provide the magazines free of charge. Articles and columns will be written with vocabulary consistent with the students reading levels. Nothing will be convoluted. I want the students to completely understand the message of the article instead of getting sidetracked by the confusing language.
Monthly columns will include a question and answer section for both teachers and students. It will be refreshing for students to hear answers to questions they may have themselves been pondering. The articles will be focused on current exhibitions and artists of contemporary art. Also, to facilitate better understanding, I am including a glossary after each article to define terms that may be too difficult.
My personal favorite section of the magazine has to be the Do It Yourself pages. As artists, these students can try a modified version of an artists’ work and get a first-hand experience on contemporary art. I believe that only through experimentation can one truly understand something. Students and teachers will be allowed to submit stories of how their projects worked as well as feedback and questions concerning the activity.
I want this magazine to be an interactive tool for art students to gain a better understanding of the art of their time. This is how the name Zeitgeist came into play. Defined literally as “spirit” and “time”, the word exemplifies the purpose of my magazine. It will address the “spirit” or art of “our” or students time.
Zeitgeist is a new monthly magazine geared towards to high school students. To receive issues, teachers can request a subscription for an entire school year. For $9.99, classrooms will get 10 issues of Zeitgeist, which will be scheduled to arrive the first week of each month.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents (1pg)
Q&A column (2pg)
Exhibition review (5pg)
Interview with a new teen artist (3pg)
Review of an interactive museum exhibition for students (2pg)
Monthly glossary of contemporary art terms (1pg)
Profile of an art teacher (1pg)
Monthly art events (2-3pg)
Art project you can do at home (2pg)
Games and puzzles (1pg)
Table of Contents (1pg)
Q&A column (2pg)
Exhibition review (5pg)
Interview with a new teen artist (3pg)
Review of an interactive museum exhibition for students (2pg)
Monthly glossary of contemporary art terms (1pg)
Profile of an art teacher (1pg)
Monthly art events (2-3pg)
Art project you can do at home (2pg)
Games and puzzles (1pg)
Letter from the Editor
Dear Art Teachers and Students:
It is with great pleasure that I bring you Zeitgeist. For years, public schools have been supplied with glossy, thin magazines to distribute to students and use as a teaching device. From personal experience, they were either too confusing or the administration failed to distribute them during the appropriate month. It was such an unfortunate occurrence that such learning materials were considered trivial and not properly planned into a students’ curriculum.
Having spent Kindergarten through senior year of high school in public schools focused on the arts, I had the privilege of receiving supplementary magazines focusing on the arts every month. Although this sounds like an improvement compared to my academic classes, several flaws still sneaked their way into my art classes. First, the magazines were written using vocabulary most students never heard. Even when a article looked fascinating, it would take way past the allotted class time to fully understand the thesis. Second, newer issues of the art magazines were almost impossible to find in classrooms. Teachers constantly reused the same October and Art in America issues from the 1980s. Although they were interesting, when I could understand them, it was frustrating that I could not read a magazine focusing on the art of my time. Having such little exposure to current art trends, I focused most of my art on traditional and classical examples since they were much easier to come across in books and magazines. Post-modern and contemporary art were almost foreign topics to me when I graduated high school.
It was not until college that I realized I knew almost nothing about mod-late 20th century art. This is when I got the idea to create Zeitgeist. This monthly magazine was to be distributed monthly to teachers of art classes of Junior High and High School levels. The narrow audience I am reaching is purposely done to lower costs, thus allowing me to provide the magazines free of charge. Articles and columns will be written with vocabulary consistent with the students reading levels. Nothing will be convoluted. I want the students to completely understand the message of the article instead of getting sidetracked by the confusing language.
Monthly columns will include a question and answer section for both teachers and students. It will be refreshing for students to hear answers to questions they may have themselves been pondering. The articles will be focused on current exhibitions and artists of contemporary art. Also, to facilitate better understanding, I am including a glossary after each article to define terms that may be too difficult.
My personal favorite section of the magazine has to be the Do It Yourself pages. As artists, these students can try a modified version of an artists’ work and get a first-hand experience on contemporary art. I believe that only through experimentation can one truly understand something. Students and teachers will be allowed to submit stories of how their projects worked as well as feedback and questions concerning the activity.
I want this magazine to be an interactive tool for art students to gain a better understanding of the art of their time. This is how the name Zeitgeist came into play. Defined literally as “spirit” and “time”, the word exemplifies the purpose of my magazine. It will address the “spirit” or art of “our” or students time.
I really enjoy such a unique approach to this magazine. I personally have never read a classroom magazine, though I have read magazines for kids. Do you see a distinction between magazines for kids inside and outside of classrooms? Do you intend to keep an emphasis on clean cut education, or will the magazine be a "have fun as you are learning" thing, with more of an emphasis on fun? (i.e. Nickelodeon magazine, which had the occasional science experiment or current event, but everything was coated in a heavy layer of neon colors and misspelled words.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am curious about the art project instruction pages. What kinds of projects are you going to offer? I think that this section could make or break the magazine: there's a danger of the projects being too "young" (like Make a Picture Frame for Mom), or too structured, but if you teach a new technique in every issue that could be really cool. Do note that this emphasizes the "craftsy" more than the "artsy" though.
I think this is an amazing idea. I, too, came to college before I realized that I knew very little about contemporary art. If I wanted to know anything at all, I had to plunge into an art world that, although interesting, felt a bit too adult for my then current state. Being a pretentious high schooler, I wonder: Would high school kids be engaged in something created exclusively for them or would they feel talked down to? I think projects might be annoying because it's an art magazine, not a craft magazine, and thus brings down the level of intellectuality.
ReplyDeleteI thought a good tagline for this magazine would be, "an interactive tool for art students to gain a better understanding of the art of their time." This sounds friendly, inviting, and straight to the point. I think they key here is accessibility.
This is a great idea. I think it's a great way to reintroduce art into the classroom which has so successfully left the lives of high school students. I knew nothing about contemporary art other than what I saw when I occasionally went to a museum. Knowing art isn't just a thing of the past can inspire kids to make their own art, and contribute to the movements that are occurring today. My only problem is accessiblity. Do you think students will sit down and read a magazine in this day in age? Will you be more successful putting this magazine online? I feel that in this laptop age, kids have turned away from paper. Multimedia will be the best way to interact with kids and to hold their attention.
ReplyDeleteI love this idea!!! When I was in high school I was only taught about the traditional paintings and when I came to college it was such a shock to know what was out there in the art world. Will your magazine be also showing works that are controversial and about social transgression (which are dealt a lot in contemporary art works) that might be considered inappropriate for high school students? (body works, works that involve nudity, for example Seed Bed by Vito Acconci) If not, how and who will be deciding what works to show and what works to not show?
ReplyDeleteFor the section of introducing an art teacher, would in it be more appropriate for your magazine to feature an artist than an art teacher, since the purpose is to introduce students to the art world than limiting them in the academy? And why teen artists? How do you define artist in this context? Are you talking about professional artists who are selling their work and having shows or artists who paint for hobby?
I think it would be really helpful for the students if the magazine included a section of introducing art schools or art departments in different universities around the nation.