On Monday, upper school Arabic students visited the Freer/Sackler Gallery of Art’s exhibit: The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. The exhibit included fifty manuscripts from Herat to Istanbul. Students observed the calligraphy and lavish illumination. The manuscripts range in date from the early eighth to the seventeenth century. They were once the possessions of Ottoman sultans and the ruling elite.
On Wednesday afternoon, Danya Ellman, the Assistant Athletic Director for Educational Support Services at George Washington University, lead a workshop on being academically prepared to succeed as a student athlete in college. She has worked with the GWU Men’s Basketball, Volleyball, Softball, Men’s Rowing, and the Swimming and Diving teams. She spoke to upper school students in the gym about the challenges of balancing sports and academics to ensure success in college. Students asked questions about ways to make sure that they are well-prepared to compete in all aspects of a rigorous academic career as a college athlete.
Ms. Stephens’ upper school Art I course are displaying a variety of uncommon art products around the school for their final project. The students were first asked two questions, should communities have the right to ask an artist exhibiting in their public space to change her work if it is perceived as offensive in some way, and should the artist be responsible for changing it? Students looked at a case that happened a few years ago on the Wellesley campus in Massachusetts about a public work of art that caused a lot of disagreement among its students. Students worked in small groups and alone to create pieces that have social messages tied with them, or connect to a controversial theme. One is purely experimental. Senior Sam Mader will place a slice of pizza sealed in an air-tight container in “random” locations around the school building while filming/documenting how people react to it.
Seniors Ned Yarsky and Ben Roodman are contestants competing for the DC-CAPITAL STARS arts scholarship. The DC-CAP program is a nonprofit dedicated to helping DC public and public charter school high school students prepare for, enroll in and graduate from college. Yarsky, a singer, and Roodman, a classical guitarist, have videos of their performances on the DC CAP website. Check them out and be sure to vote for your favorite. Finalists in the contest will perform at the The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 29. Roodman has also performed as a finalist in this competition in previous years. Yarsky is a singer in the school Rock Band Club and will be performing in the school theater production of “In the Heights” March 16-18.
Eighth graders Miles Tiller, Lucien Anderson, and Ketan Mampara created a one-minute video called “99 Cents” for the Environmental Film Festival’s student contest. Tasked with creating a brief video with a clear environmental message, the students focused on the overuse of plastic soda bottles, which though they only cost people 99 cents, can cost the environment in a lasting way. The students have also collaborated on movie projects for English and history classes throughout middle school. To learn more about the Environmental Film Festival, check out the website.
