Art is an essential element of any educational environment, and schools should make a more concerted effort to ensure that there is plenty of it on display.
Although Strath Haven hangs up a lot of students’ art, there are still many empty places where both students and teachers would like to see more work shown. More art around the school will serve as a source of inspiration and motivation for students.
Seeing art in the hallways can spark curiosity and imagination, encouraging students to think more deeply and creatively about the world around them. Additionally, art can provide a sense of connection and community, which helps to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for all students.
Sophomore Tanush Talekar would love more art to be hung up around the school and thinks it’s a great way to connect people.
“Aside from the emotional aspect, it’s important for a school to be connected to their students,” he said. “Hanging up student artwork shows that the school actually cares about what the students are pursuing and doing. Students would like to express themselves better to a larger group of people, so hanging up art is necessary to foster the growth of artists.”
Along with creating a community among students, artwork being hung up allows other non-art students to have an idea of what art students are doing in class.
Sophomore Linden Corbett agrees that it’s nice to see students’ artwork.
“It’s cool to see what the art students are working on,” Corbett said. “I also think it adds a good decorative component to the school as students are constantly walking through hallways and stairs thinking about their next class and it’s refreshing to see color and visuals rather than the constant reminder of school work.”
Art does not only add a decorative and inclusive component to the school, but can be used as an educational tool. The different styles of art can show students different cultures and famous time periods surrounding the pieces, as well as providing students a way to learn different styles and techniques involved with it.
A problem with the art that is featured now is that it is hung up for a short period of time. This only gives students a couple weeks to see the work on display. With additional permanent installations, students would see more art and blank spaces around the school would be filled.
Art teacher Mrs. Jennifer Rodgers wants to have more display cases and picture frames in order to make this possible.
“I think it would be great to have more permanent art pieces around the school, and there’s a lot of places where this could be displayed,” she said. “We want to put more display cases in, but it costs a lot of money to install them. So if we had the funding to do all of this that would be great.”
Even though there aren’t permanent art installations around the school, Rodgers started a system years ago for hanging students’ current artwork.
“We do have strips of pine wood that are on the walls that we can tack finished artwork on to,” she said. “They’re the same strips that are in the third floor hallway, honor area and those were all put up probably almost 20 years ago…there’s definitely other spots we can still put art up. I know that there are TVs that we can put artwork on and show it.”
Along with student art, people have suggested more murals around the school. Freshman Fletcher Noto thinks adding more murals or repainting murals would be beneficial.
“Murals add a really cool decorative component to the school and makes it feel less bland and boring. It would be cool to add more murals so there’s more to look at around the school or even repaint over the ones we have now,” he said.
Many people around the school seem to enjoy art being hung up because it provides many benefits. There are different options of displaying these art pieces around the school like putting it on TVs or having more display cases if more funding were put to it.*
