Picturing America for Public Libraries

We put the posters up in our kids' art gallery area along with information about each artist, and a book display of art books and artists' biographies. We created an art scavenger hunt game for the kids, which involved an "Eye Spy" component. We also had sheets for the kids to describe the art, and what they liked about it and we put these sheets up right next to the art work. It quickly became popular to see which pieces of artwork received the most "art reviews" from the kids themselves!
We invited our local schools to come and tour the library, and during each tour we took the classes to the art gallery area and showed them Picturing America. Our summer reading program this year is "Be Creative @ Your Library" and the posters were highlighted during our promotional phase. We also brought kids back to the exhibit after our drop-in after school arts & crafts program. The art biographies were circulated more during the Picturing America exhibit.

Submitted by Heather McCammond