Inside: Use these 9 unique school art exhibition ideas to jumpstart your school art show with art appreciation! Impress parents and admins alike!
When art show season arrives, art teachers everywhere up their caffeine intake. There’s so much to do!
Choosing artworks.
Making labels.
Hanging artwork.
Finding volunteers.
Printing flyers.
Hanging more artwork.
Sending emails.
Buying more tape.
Hanging even more artwork.
Laying flat on your hard concrete floor at 8pm with a bottle of ibuprofen.
Why Host a School Art Exhibition?
It’s so much work. If you’ve never done it before, it can be hard to know where to start and some school years, an art show feels like one thing too many on your to-do list. But nothing compares to seeing students light up when they see their work displayed. The reward of watching parents, friends, family, and other faculty see each student in a new way is worth all the extra hours.
School art exhibitions are a vital part of showing off all your hard work as a teacher and promoting the importance of arts in education overall. A successful art show does more than display your students’ creativity, it communicates the connections and deeper learning happening in your classroom everyday.
Instead of just hanging artworks students have created, try these other ideas to exhibit the in-depth, interconnected learning and art appreciation happening in your classroom on a day-to-day basis.
9 School Art Exhibition Ideas
1. Hang up the poems, creative writing, and other art interpretation work you have done. Put a color print of the focus artwork and hang the poems or other written work around it. Have students neatly write (or even type) their poems.
2. Take photographs of kinesthetic activities, tableaux vivant, or other such dramatic activities and put those on display to show that interpreting art is active and fun.
See lesson: Creating TV Commercials About Art
3. Scan copies of their work from the worksheets bundle and photos of students interpreting art and put on a looped slideshow that runs continuously throughout your event.
See lesson: Cinquain Poem Template
4. Have students perform spoken word versions of their poems, scripts, and interpretations on stage.
See lesson: Kinesthetic Activities to Do with Art
5. Videotape skits or activities that you have done and display at your art show.
See lesson: The Two Fridas Creative Writing and Drama
6. If you are doing a family art night, have an art interpretation table with art prints and templates from the worksheet bundle! Invite students to show their parents how fun it is to connect with and write about art.
See lesson: Free Art Worksheet Bundle
7. Print pictures of students in the process of working and hang those along side the finished pieces.
See lesson: Australian Aboriginal Art
8. Hang up a work of art and put piles of post-its next to it. Have students and families write their thoughts about the artwork and post it next to it.
See lesson: Edvard Munch’s The Frieze of Life
9. Have your students be “docents” of either the art of their peers or of artworks you have studied this year.
Student Art Show Planning Kit
If you’re still overwhelmed by all the planning and prep work, we have just the thing for you!
In this Art Show Kit, you will find several ideas and documents to help you put together a spectacular student art exhibition experience for all, while making things easier for you as the teacher.
This School Art Exhibition Kit contains:
- Complete Art Show Guide
- Email Template
- 3 Flyer Templates
- 3 Volunteer Sign-up Templates
- ‘Your Art Story’ Student Worksheet
- ‘What is Art?’ Student Worksheet
- 2 Interactive Art Discussion Assignment Templates
- 2 Artwork Label Templates
- Artwork & Poetry Display Template with Example
- Project Sign Template with Examples
- 2 ‘Make & Take’ Art Show Activities with Instructions
- Artwork Reflection & Rubric Student Worksheet
Packed with all the tips and templates you need to host an amazing art show!
I always love all your ideas. I will be incorporating some of these for my show next year. I have had very poor experiences with volunteers (hanging pieces upside down, framing pieces crooked, ugh) and, as a result, I feel I have to do everything myself- including +700 student pieces, plus group pieces, club work, and thematic show pieces. I have to prepare and store everything in my classroom and have a small window of time to hang everything (from 2-6pm) in the cafeteria. Everything must come down immediately after the show at 8pm and be returned to the students the following week. The turn out for the evening we call “museum night” (which includes science and history fair) is lower each year…it’s a challenge to put so much time and effort into something that no one sees or cares about. Teachers don’t see their students’ artwork or the show because they don’t attend. Parents only devout 10 minutes and only want to see their own child’s artwork…if that.