by Kaitlin Kendrick
The de Young museum, located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, was founded in 1895 and has become an integral part of the arts scene in San Francisco. As one part of the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco, the de Young is part of one of the largest art museums in the United States and the largest in San Francisco. In October of 2005, the de Young museum reopened in a building designed to make a statement, complementing the collections housed inside.
The de Young museum runs a Teen Advisory Board to reach out to teens and encourage them to get involved in the museum and their communities and the board hosted the first Teens Take Action! event in 2017, a free event for teens that allows them to explore different social issues and themes found in art. The Teen Advisory Board is an internship opportunity for high school students in San Francisco to plan, develop, and promote an event that allows teens to come together and discuss important social issues inspired by the museum’s collections or exhibits.
In 2017, San Francisco celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Summer of Love. Inspired by the youth movement of the ‘60s and the exhibition of the art, fashion, and Rock & Roll of the ‘60s at the de Young, the Teens Take Action! event highlighted the idea of unity and support of one another as they tackled important social issues. One of the goals of the event was to provide resources to teens in order to help them learn and understand how and where difficult discussions can take place in the current social climate. The Teen Advisory Board used the de Young museum to create a place where teens could learn to interact with issues in their community, as well as interacting with the museum itself in a way that went beyond just looking at the art.
The 2018 Teens Take Action! event was held on March 2nd, and focused on a call for future liberation. It was inspired by the Revelations: Art from the African American South exhibition at the de Young and the way that the art addressed race, class, gender, and spirituality. The event included music, dance, collective art making, as well as discussions with local youth organizations.
The Teens Take Action! events, as well as the Teen Advisory Board that plans them, allows the de Young museum to inspire a generation of teens to be involved in their communities and introduces them to the ways in which art can be used in order to develop connections and discussions between groups of people. Teens Take Action! makes the museum and its art accessible to visitors in a way that it usually is not, and helps to illustrate the impact that the art had, and is still having, on society.
While the Teens Take Action! event provides teens with an interesting way in which to explore social issues and how to discuss or address them, it also allows teens to interact with art in a different way than just seeing it on the wall. The art is discussed and incorporated into the different themes of the event and helps to illustrate the different social issues that are being discussed. Through this program, the de Young museum is introducing teens to the importance of art in society and the ways in which it can be used in order to make a point, while hopefully inspiring them to continue visiting and to take the art that inspires them out into their communities in order to inspire change.
To learn more about the Teens Take Action! events, visit the de Young museum website or listen to past members of the Teen Advisory Board discuss their efforts in creating the Teens Take Action! events and the impact they hope the event can make: