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The Past at One's Fingertips.
A New Project of the State Hermitage Celebrates its First Anniversary On 21 March 2007 a Round Table was held in the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Curatorial Center to discuss the first year results of a new State Hermitage project entitled The Past at One's Fingertips. This specialized 3-year program for children who are blind or have limited vision casts light on the history of man from ancient times (the Stone Age) to the Middle Ages using the "prism of archeology." In archeology objects contain information which you can "see with your hands," by touching them. To a considerable extent, the program complements school courses on history. From January through May 2006, around 90 trial sessions were held in which more than 300 students from specialized boarding schools Nr 1 and Nr 2 took part. Experience showed that the optimal age group for long-term courses is those studying in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. In addition, the program is rather easily adapted for various age groups and is also entirely accessible to children with normal vision. Systematic courses according to a 2-year plan began in October 2006. A special archeological "zone" was set up in the building of the new Storage Facility of the State Hermitage. Here children can, as it were, perform archeological excavations on their own in "class laboratories" for studying the finds. The practical side of the studies is not limited to digs, but also includes various creative tasks: drawing on a vertical surface in the style of cliff painting to the accompaniment of ethnic music, sculpting clay vessels of various ages, partial reconstruction of the production processes of antiquity (for example, preparation of wax forms for making bronze castings), etc. Models of archeological monuments were made for use in the study program: Paleolithic lodgings made from mammoth bones, Neolithic settlements on piles, a Scythian kurgan (burial mound), a burial construction - dolmen, and Medieval Staraya Ladoga. The most prolific category of things prepared for use in the studies was replicas of archeological finds. When making them, the techniques used in Antiquity, which are known to a very few specialist practitioners, were observed. Besides having a large assortment of finds themselves, there is the need to have several copies of one and the same article (5 to 6 examples), since it is important for the blind children and those with residual vision to be able to hold the item they are learning about in their hands adolescents. Assistance in carrying out the project came from the Foundation of American Friends of the Hermitage, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts, the Imperial Porcelain Factory OJSC, the magazine Novy Metsenat and the company Master-Complex. |
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Copyright
© 2006 State Hermitage Museum |
