Docent Phyllis Heller takes a group from Huntington Point
condominium in Delray Beach on a tour of the exhibition
‘Cut! Costume and the Cinema’ at the Boca Raton Museum of Art,
which is marking its 60th anniversary. Photo by Tim Stepien
By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley
Becoming a docent at the Boca Raton Museum of Art is a little like getting a graduate degree in fine art. Just ask any of the 55 volunteers who have been through the six-month training program to be a museum guide.
“Being here and going through this program is like being back in Carnegie-Mellon University art school,” says docent Linda Schottland, who has an art background.
On this afternoon, a group of 30 people from the Huntington Place condominium in Delray Beach are about an hour late for their scheduled tour of the museum’s two newest exhibits: “California Impressionism: Paintings from The Irvine Museum” and “Cut! Costume and the Cinema.”
The latter is “a show based on the exactitude and research that goes into period costumes for the movies,” explains curator of education Claire Clum. These shows kick off the museum’s 60th anniversary year.
Clum is much in evidence this afternoon as she organizes the docents whom she oversees.
When another group of visitors shows up early for their scheduled tour on this Friday afternoon, Clum shuffles her docents to get the people on their way through the exhibits. She doesn’t want too many people in the same areas of the museum at the same time or it can get crowded and noisy.
This makes crowd control difficult for the docents, but they are trained to handle problems.
The docent training program is offered every other year to 15 to 20 people. The trainees meet two times a week for course work to become immersed in the museum’s permanent collection, as well as to learn tour techniques, strategies and planning and the logistics of guiding groups through the exhibitions.
“We don’t focus our training on reciting facts,” says curator Clum. “Our goal is to help our docents be facilitators who can cause a discussion and engage our visitors with questions.”
To graduate, the docents have to give a one-hour tour to staff and other volunteers without using notes.
After graduation, there’s continuing education, previews and briefings for new exhibits and additional workshops on topics such as how to work with students. The docents also must commit to working at least three hours a week.
“Being a docent is a wonderful opportunity to learn and get to share what you’ve learned,” says Phyllis Heller as she takes off with the first 15 people to straggle in from the condo group. The others will be under the supervision of Schottland.
Different styles
Going along, we discover these two women’s presentation styles are very different, but each uses her own personality to keep the people engaged.
For example, Heller was an accountant before she retired in November. She’s been a docent for eight years. “I’ve always been interested in art. I’m drawn to the sheer beauty of it. It lets me use the other side of my brain,” she says.
Although she enjoys pointing out the period costumes on display in the “Cut” exhibit, she comes alive when we come to the room filled with California Impressionist paintings.
A group from Huntington Point condominium in Delray Beach
listens as docent Phyllis Heller explains the
intricacies of an exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
Photos by Tim Stepien
She is taken with the way the artists apply paint and their use of light, which she points out in four or five paintings she finds particularly noteworthy. “We are only together for an hour so we can’t talk about everything. But you are welcome to look around after the tour or to come back to find ones you especially like,” she says.
For those being led by Schottland, they can’t help but feel her passion for the costume exhibit. She was a fashion editor for Glamour magazine, and her background in the field makes her enthusiasm contagious.
A wine-colored waistcoat covered with gold embroidery and studded with gold buttons is on display.
“This was the beginning of the three-piece suit,” Schottland says, pointing out the coat, vest, lace-edged shirt and knee britches. This particular outfit was worn by Heath Ledger playing Giacomo Casanova in the 2005 movie Casanova.
Schottland nearly hugs the mannequin as she explores the delicate stitching. Then she sweeps around to the rear of the figure with her group in tow to point out the many useless buttons in the back of its costume.
“The buttons are how they wore their wealth,” she says as she moves on to the next opulently dressed mannequin.
Visitors also share
Being a docent isn’t a one-way street. Heller remembers a tour group she had whose members were MIT alumnae. They all remembered studying M.C. Escher in school. So when they came to some works by him, she let them talk.
“Sometimes if you listen, you learn a lot,” she says.
Schottland had a different experience. She was giving a tour awhile back when a distinguished man with a European accent came into the museum. She asked if he’d like to join her group. “But he said he knew more than me and had no need of a tour,” she says.
Even so, she invited him to follow along. And at the end of the tour, he said she’d done such a good job that he wanted to give some of his artworks to the museum. She thought he was joking.
That’s until he arranged to have 23 Théophile Alexandre Steinlen prints from his collection donated on his demise, noting they are in honor of the work the docents do at the museum.
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