First year students from the Class of 2025 had the opportunity to attend the Phoenix Art Museum for an experiential session on the Power of Language. In this session, we explored the diversity of language by playing a modified game of Scattergories while viewing the Generation Paper: Fast Fashion of the 1960s exhibit in the fashion gallery. It wasn't lost on these students that the technology used in the paper dresses on display influenced our modern day PPE. Next we worked on refining language by exploring nouns, verbs, and adjectives while observing the work Ponder by Deborah Butterfield in the Breaking Up exhibit. We then turned these words into thoughtful and provocative haikus. During these activities, students were challenged to look carefully at works of art, talk about what they observed, back their ideas up with evidence, listen to and consider the views of others, and discussed multiple interpretations. As a follow up to this session, they were encouraged to read their haikus to a friend or family member and ask them what they visualize when they hear it. Did it resemble the artwork?
