The Heckscher Museum has debuted Teen Voices, a new initiative giving high school students a platform to talk about art and disseminate the artwork in current Museum exhibitions. Available through the Museum’s Bloomberg Connects App – and accessible to all – the project’s first partners are Half Hollow Hills School District and Valley Stream Central High School District.
A select tour of Robert Graham Carter: The Art of Reflection is now available as an audio tour and as a video tour in American Sign Language (ASL). The collaborative accessibility project with Half Hollow Hills High School provides teens’ perspectives on particular works by Carter in the exhibition. ASL teacher Laura Anderson explains the project in both audio and ASL in the Bloomberg Connects app.
Partnering with the Valley Stream Central High School District, Advance Placement (AP) high school art students lent their voices to an audio tour of Long Island’s Best 2025. As part of the community project, 33 students chose artwork and then provided thoughtful observations, personal reactions, and critical perspectives on their peers’ artwork which additional layers of dialog to the exhibition.
“This project not only fosters artistic and intellectual exchange among young creatives, but also amplifies their
voices within in the museum space,” said Joy Weiner, Director of Education. “The Museum continues to provide an inclusive platform for the next generation of artists to express themselves.”
Special thanks to art teachers Mario Bakalov, Ed Lee, and Allan Nafte, and Director of Fine and Performing Arts, Adam G. Erdos, who worked with their students and the Museum’s Education and Visitor Experience staff to make this unique program a great success.
Teen Voices will continue as part of the Museum’s outreach to Long Island students and highlight upcoming exhibitions. Bloomberg Connects can be accessed through the QR code featured here. Robert Graham Carter and Long Island’s Best are on view through May 25, 2025.
Images on this page: Students behind the scenes during visits to the Museum.
