“They can use that $1,000 to go toward their tuition for college, said Scott-Williams. Beyond that, the top 15 high school seniors chosen each year by Studio in a School receive a $1,000 scholarship. Participating students automatically have their pieces recorded in the Met’s annals – meaning that the student’s name, their art, the school and their teacher will all be archived at the Met in perpetuity. There are also some other nice perks to being chosen for the PS Art exhibition.
“To have your artwork in the Met, are you kidding me?” exclaimed Scott-Williams. In addition to bringing these children the opportunity to get in-depth arts education, Studio in a School also offers them the remarkable opportunity to have their artwork shown in one of New York’s most prestigious museums. This is really important stuff to be doing.”
I’m helping students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to work and study and learn the arts deeply. “I’ve dedicated my career to helping students who look like me have a high-level training in the arts, period. She specifically likes that Studio in a School focuses on schools served by Title I, a federal subsidy that supports low-income students – students who often come from neighborhoods that do not receive the resources they need to let them learn about the arts. A longtime jobholder in performance arts, she jumped at the opportunity to follow her passion to work in-depth with the visual arts. As Scott-Williams put it, “we serve underrepresented children in underresourced neighborhoods.” This means providing opportunities to take part in the arts for children who may not get enough art curriculum – if any at all – from the schools where they learn.įor Scott-Williams, this is very personal work. The organization was founded in 1977, in response to budget cuts that all but eliminated the arts from NYC public schools, and Studio in a School now offers programming from pre-K populations up through high-schoolers. Partnering with communities in 10 different states, Studio in a School works with numerous institutions around New York, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Photograph: The Rathkopfs (Anna and Jordan Rathkopf) For a lot of the parents it’s their first time coming to the museum – the child has been the conduit to expand the knowledge base of the family.” Everyone is talking together, it’s so joyful. Everyone is so exited, the noise level is up to here, and gleefully so. “We had 300 kids and their parents to see the unveiling. “On the opening day it’s just magical,” she told me. This is now Scott-Williams’s second in-person art exhibition with Studio in a School, and the electricity of the opening day thrills her. Her first art exhibition with the organization took place, as she put it, “in a very large Zoom room”, and it seemed like forever before the art was again exhibited in-person. She jumped at the chance to join Studio in a School, but unfortunately her arrival was just days before the Covid pandemic hit New York. A former vice-president of arts education with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Scott-Williams long wanted to work more directly in the visual arts. Scott-Williams has taken a long road to celebrating children’s art. “It’s a gift to be able to support young people in this way,” she said. As Scott-Williams shared with me, whittling down those 1,200-plus submissions to the 122 on display was daunting work, but worth it.
Now in its 21st year, PS Art is an annual showing of the best of the best artwork made by K-12 students in New York City public schools, exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alison Scott-Williams, the president of Studio in a School NYC, was telling me about the difficult task of choosing the very best art from the over 1,200 pieces submitted this year for the PS Art program.
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