Students get art smart

In partnership with the digital magazine Art Practical and the Catharine Clark Gallery, 826 Valencia has just finished up Art Smarts, a standout winter workshop that took students through the steps of writing art reviews. Art Smarts was a three-week-long workshop, in which a group of brilliant middle school students met at the Catharine Clarke Gallery next to SFMOMA downtown to study an exhibition on “portraits” and choose the piece for which they would eventually write a review. Tess Thackara and Patricia Maloney, two intrepid editors for Art Practical, taught this class, equipping students with the right tools to interpret the art they took in.

Our Art Smarts students each chose the piece of art that intrigued them most to write intelligent reviews that are now published in Art Practical’s latest issue as “shotgun reviews.” We’re so excited to share this collaboration with Art Practical and Catharine Clark Gallery, and we’re even more thrilled for you to read the amazing work these students produced in three Saturday classes!