The Power of Questioning

Writing a script is not a linear process. For example, Rachelle Doorley the Interim Director of Education at the San Jose Museum of Art was telling me that in a recent podcast that they did a free-lance writer wrote the initial script. She reviewed the script and made changes. Then she sent the script to a colleague in the education department who sent it back with changes. Then they sent it to the curator of the exhibit for feedback. Then the person who was doing the voice-overs had some questions which led to more revisions. In total the script went through five major revisions.

Rachelle went over our script and gave us some very helpful feedback. First of all the script was too long. They would like us to shoot for a 45-90 seconds. Also our script primarily tells about the painting. Instead she would like it to be two way conversation. One where we offer what we see, but also ask questions to help the viewer go deeper in looking at the piece of artwork. Rachelle said we should be hesitant about putting an answer our there, because it could stop people from trying to think for themselves. Contemporary art is about opening up people’s minds to look at the work in a different way. Research says that when people go to art museums on average they spend about 5 seconds looking at a painting. The purpose of the vodcast should be to help them go deeper and to facilitate viewer interpretation. A metaphor she gave me was it is about seeing someone famous vs. having a deep conversation with a friend. These vodcasts should offer a new voice on these pieces of artwork from a Teacher Perspective. That will require participants to consider what lens they want to look at the artwork from and what story they will tell.