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Introduction
Victor Edmond D’Amico (19 May 1904 - 1 April 1987) born and raised in New York, was a pioneer in art education, widely known for his thirty years of work as the first Director of Education at The Museum of Modern Art. D'Amico studied fine arts at Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and the Teacher's College of Columbia University (1920-1930). Prior to his work at the Museum of Modern Art, D’Amico ran the art department at the Fieldston School (1926-1948), and also taught at Columbia College (1934-42), New York University (1965-72) and Southampton College (1969). In 1971, D’Amico started the Napeague Institute of Art, later renamed the Victor D’amico Institute of Art, a non-profit art education organization on eastern Long Island. He spent the remainder of his life living in Lazy Point, Amagansett with his artist wife, Mabel D’Amico. Their house is preserved by the Victor D’amico Institute of Art and is open for scheduled tours.

Work at MoMA
For more than three decades (1937-1970), D’Amico served as the head of MoMA’s education department. D’Amico became a pioneer in art education through the development of his various educational programs at the MoMA. His programs included: the Young People’s Gallery, the National Committee on Art Education, the People’s Art Center, the Children’s Art Carnival, and Art with the Family.

The Young People’s gallery / The New York City High School Program
The Young People’s Gallery was opened under the direction of Victor D’Amico on December 1st, 1937. As a collaboration between the MoMA and twelve secondary schools, The Young People’s Gallery was an “educational experiment” with the intent of “making the Museum’s collection more accessible to New York public and private schools.” The program consisted of student jurors who curated and installed exhibitions that were then circulated around the participating schools and at the Young People’s Gallery space in the MoMA. The project sought to expand art education to allow for real world experience and give students direct contact with art and the exhibition experience. The Young People’s Gallery also provided slide talks, teaching models and portfolios, art history texts, films, and more than 100 visual aids to participating schools. While the program was initially privately funded, it was expanded after its initial success by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Foundation, the General Board of Education, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Victor D’Amico’s efforts to expand the high school program culminated in more than 130 sets of educational materials circulated monthly to 58 high schools with more than 175,000 enrolled students.

The Children’s Art Carnival
In 1942, D’Amico founded the widely acclaimed Children’s Art Carnival program at the Museum of Modern Art, where it would be presented periodically for over twenty years. D’Amico initially conceived of the Children’s Art Carnival as an experiment in art education that would be available solely to children throughout New York City. In line with his seminal belief that art education should be based in individual experimentation as opposed to the teaching of rote techniques, The Children’s Art Carnival fostered an environment in which children were empowered to make creative decisions without the burden of adult influence or pedagogical standards. As D’Amico writes in his book, Experiments in Creative Art Teaching, the directive of the The Children’s Art Carnival was “...to free the child of his cliches or imitative mannerisms and to help him discover his own way of seeing and expressing”. Within each hour long session, children ranging in age from three to twelve entered the space through a gate in the contour of a child. Aside from the trained teachers, adults were not permitted. In the center of the room, the children interacted with a series of motivational toys that encouraged the exploration of line, color, and form. After spending the first half of the workshop playing with the motivational toys, the children were brought to a studio where they worked within a variety of mediums and materials on projects in collage, assemblage, drawing, and painting. While The Children’s Art Carnival encouraged individual expression and exploration, D’Amico stressed the import role of the teacher. As he noted, it is the teacher’s responsibility to be sensitive to the needs of their students and create an open environment that both motivates and informs.

The Children’s Art Carnival went on to receive international recognition. In 1957, the Museum of Modern Art presented the program with the International Trade Fairs in Milan and Barcelona. The program was then featured in the United States Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair in Belgium. In 1958, on behalf of the International Council of The Museum of Modem Art and The Asia Society, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis presented The Children’s Art Carnival to Mrs. Indira Gandhi as a gift for the National Children's Museum in New Delhi, India. This was the first permanent installment and international tour of The Children’s Art Carnival. The program successfully toured major cities throughout India. In 1969, the Museum of Modern Art sponsored the incorporation of the Children’s Art Carnival at The Harlem School of the Arts, where it was free to Harlem residents in Headstart programs, day care centers, public schools and numerous neighborhood organizations. The Children’s Art Carnival was initially financed by the Museum of Modern Art, with subsequent contributions from individuals and foundations, including The Ford Foundation, The New York Times Foundation, The New York Fund for Children, the Van Amerigen Fund, and the Heckscher Foundation for Children. Betty Blayton Taylor served as the Carnival's Executive Director, with the aid of Consulting and Advisory Boards comprised of Harlem residents. The Children’s Art Carnival has since been offered at the Victor D’Amico Institute of Art in Amagansett, New York.

The National Committee on Art Education
The National Committee on Art Education was started in 1942 as an attempt to rebel against the business interests of larger national arts organizations. Led by D’Amico and a few of his close friends, the committee grew during the first few years to over a thousand members, most of them art professionals. The committee, which met annually and was sponsored by MOMA, sought to lay out the current dangers (contests, copy books, paint-by-number kits, and teacher training) of the larger art institutions. Guest speakers including, Herbert Read, Margaret Mead, Archibald Macleish, Walter Gropius, and Meyer Schapiro, were invited to talk about the arts community and more specifically the direction of art education. Labelling itself as “an avant-garde group,” the committee became prestigious for its noted affiliates and associations with the MoMA. The committee led D’Amico to invest in new approaches to teacher training.

War Veteran Art Center
The Museum of Modern Art’s Armed Services Program, established during World War II, supplied art materials to men and women in uniform through the United Service Organization. With the end of the war, the program expanded with ongoing offerings at the MoMA. The War Veteran Art Center opened in the summer of 1944 on West Fifty-sixth Street, with additional studio spaces at 681 Fifth Avenue. From 1944 to 1948, the center was devoted exclusively to veterans “to discover the best and the most effective ways of bringing about, through the arts, the readjustment of the veteran to civilian life.” The program eventually expanded into the People’s Art Center, which accepted non-veterans.

The People’s Art Center
The People’s Art Center, renamed in 1948, offered art classes to people of all ages. The program grew out of the structure and success of the wartime center for veterans, started in 1944. Classes in painting, clay work, collage, and assemblage were offered to 800 children and 500 adults weekly. Though the demographic was primarily upper-middle-class, the MoMA was dedicated to ensuring affordable fees and yearly scholarships.

Through the Enchanted Gate
In 1952 and 1953, the MoMA and WNBC-WNBT co-produced a television series called Through the Enchanted Gate created by Victor D’Amico. The series broadcasted activities that took place at the People’s Art Center to a national audience. Instructional pamphlets were available to families to try the exercises at home.

Children’s Art Caravan
Victor D’Amico was intent on expanding the Children’s Art Carnival, and in 1969, created The Children’s Art Caravan. Financed by a grant from The JDR 3rd Fund, the Caravan consisted of two trailers that were designed as mobile art stations for children whose schools lacked art programs or proper facilities. Continuing in his vision of The Children’s Art Carnival as a workshop for teachers as well as children, The Children’s Art Caravan included visual aids and texts that would guide the teachers in D’Amico’s educational philosophy.

In 1972, the New York Board of Education’s Learning Cooperative proposed the prototype of the two car caravan, created by Victor D’Amico and his wife Mabel, to various school districts, but it was unable to receive adequate funding.

The Victor D’Amico Institute of Art
In 1955, the MoMA began to offer art classes at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, New York. D'Amico, looking for a permanent home, worked with local baymen to dock a barge at its current location just northeast of the Mackay Towers. It was originally called Kearsarge, a Native American word meaning "place of heaven," However, the popular name of "The Art Barge" stuck. A second story was added later. The Art Barge now operates June through September.

The Art Barge is a non-profit art education organization dedicated to D’amico’s theory, “that the arts are a humanizing force and their major function is to vitalize living.” As the arts are increasingly neglected by educational institutions, The Art Barge recognizes the artistic potential within every man, woman, and child. Through weekend workshops, open studio sessions, and evening events, The Art Barge is an accessible art center that prides itself on furthering arts education and reflecting the rich art history of Long Island.

Studio Painting
Instruction to artists of all levels of experience individually and in a group setting. Students work at their own pace and in their own style using any painting medium: acrylic, oil, watercolor, tempera. Outdoor easels are provided to paint on the decks and beaches. Weekly demonstrations, motivations set-ups, life models and Friday group critiques are included. Basic studio materials provided. Canvases are available for sale.

Watercolor
Explore watercolor painting through demonstrations and daily exercises in transparent layering, dry brush, wet on wet techniques and color mixing. Develop a familiarity with the relationship of water, paper, and pigment. Emphasis on individual process through guided experimentation, using landscape, still life, personal objects and a life model.

Pastel
This course is designed for all levels of artists. Participants will experiment and utilize different applications and techniques while learning how to work with multiple layers. Preparing a work surface with different primers, as well as under paintings will be addressed. Subject material will include still life with a local focus, a life model, landscape on location and botanicals.

Collage
The 2D application of pasted papers onto a flat surface. Through suggested motivational and technical exercises, discussion and demonstrations, participants will discover the various collage possibilities of papers, glues, and mounting surfaces to develop their own level of interpretation and style.

3D Workshop
This class will examine methods of assemblage by creating elevated planes and incorporating three-dimensional objects. Participants will compose and construct in relief using wood, sand & concrete casting, plastics, glass & mosaic, mobiles, cardboards, paper mache, man-made and found objects to enhance the impact of their compositions. Tools and basic supplies are included along with a tour of the D’Amico Studio.

Ceramics
Experiment with various forms of hand-building: pinching, coiling, molding and slab construction. Explore the use of a variety of surface embellishments including texturing, marbleizing, carving a painterly approach of producing functional and/or decorative pieces. Materials and firing fees included. All levels of experience.

Drawing
Explore various methods and techniques while working from still life, landscape, figure and imagination. Employ different drawing media, including charcoal, graphite and chalks.

Encaustic
Explore the versatile and ancient medium of encaustic, a paint made from pigment, beeswax and resins which is applied in a molten form using heat. The use of basic encaustic materials and various techniques, texturing, collage and fusing will be covered.

Photography
Two workshops designed to develop the inner and outer creative eye by exploring the natural environment around The Art Barge and Photographic history. Explore technical aspects of the camera, fieldtrips, assignments, and critiques. BYOC – Bring your own digital or film camera.

Children's Studio
The Children’s Studio offers instruction to young people in a variety of art forms, painting, collage and sculpture. Indoor and outdoor studio experiences and visiting artists will be combined to provide enriching and creative processes in a natural environment

Artists Speaks
The Art Barge annually hosts a a series of guest lectures with distinguished artists.

Pedagogy
Within an era of intense political, social, and technological change in America, artists began to create work that challenged traditional pictorial representations and aesthetics and embraced abstraction. In turn, these emerging contemporary art movements introduced new ways of looking at and practicing art that had an indelible impact on art education. Victor D’Amico strongly believed that the overarching cultural attitude of the time disregarded art professionals and educators and undervalued the arts as a whole. His philosophies and ideologies were informed by his pervasive belief that the arts were a bridge to educational and emotional growth that should be respected within society. In essence, D’Amico viewed “art as a way of life; of seeing and enjoying all that surrounded us and all that was within us." He believed that developing an aesthetic vision and art practice was both personally and collectively enriching, as it allowed for a greater appreciation of the natural and built world. Regardless of artistic talent, D’Amico believed that creativity is intrinsic to every individual and should be fostered through art education.

D’Amico stressed the importance of discouraging imitation and supporting an individual’s ways of seeing and self-expression. By challenging accepted norms and pursuing unique perspectives, D’Amico argued that the value of art far surpassed that of the final product. It was the process and experience of interacting with art itself that inspired new thought. D’Amico therefore dedicated his life to the creation of programs that allowed children and adults to explore their creative potential and heighten their sensitivity to the artistic value within all areas of life. The study of contemporary art was central to D’Amico’s education plan and he believed that lived experience was intrinsically linked to modern art. A student’s environment was therefore closely related to their educational development. D’Amico stressed that through art making, a student would be introduced to elements of design: color, shape and composition that would emerge in everyday objects. The use of motivational toys became integral to his practice. As he notes.. “Toys have an important place is creative growth of the child...They are his first possessions and the objects of profound interest and affection. Through them he is introduced to the elements of design, texture, pattern, form, color and rhythms as they become the tools of his activity and his imagination.”

Considering D’Amico’s belief that a student’s everyday environment was linked to their artistic development, D’Amico explored the role of parents as teachers. In his thirteen-week television series, Through the Enchanted Gate (1952-53) and subsequent publication Art for the Family, D’Amico stressed that “...all people have creative ability and that anyone at any age can enjoy and develop his aptitudes in art.” Developing the creative interests of his student’s parents would help ensure arts presence in the home and promote a student’s individualized tactile development, artistic collaboration, and aesthetic sensitivity.

D’Amico was influenced by John Dewey’s experience-based pedagogy and utilized students environment to stimulate creativity. In turn, he often took a laboratory style approach to learning. D’Amico promoted engagement and interactivity in many of his museum programs and exhibitions. From the Children Arts Carnival, which promoted play as a form of motivation, to the Young People’s Gallery, which gave high school students the rare experience of curating an exhibition, D’Amico expanded the boundaries of the classroom. This sensibility lead to his resistance of structured lesson plans and opened up a new discourse on art education.