Children From Across U.S. Get a Peek at Getty

Legions of art lovers and see-and-be-seensters still have nearly a month to wait before the hilltop Getty Center’s much-anticipated opening day, but on Friday, 51 children from across the country got the run of the place.

One middle school student from every state (and one from a U.S. military base in Japan) arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday to participate in the Kids Congress on Art.

The three-day educational event will take them from Brentwood to Olvera Street to St. Elmo Village. Along the way, they will capture their perceptions of the metropolis in photographs, then assemble their work into a three-dimensional sculpture that will remain on display in Los Angeles.

The Kids Congress on Art is the culmination of a two-year project of the Getty Education Institute for the Arts called “Wave Your Banner! Exploring Community Through Art.”

From Littlerock, Calif., to Berryville, Va., delegates to the congress created--with the help of their classmates--3-by-4-foot banners representing the importance of the arts in their communities.

A Getty-convened committee selected 51 schools’ banners at random from the more than 300 submitted, said Leilani Lattin Duke, director of the Education Institute. Each school chose a delegate, who was allowed to bring a teacher or parent with all expenses paid by the Getty.

“From the kids’ perspective, they’re going to be not only having a chance to meet kids from all over the country . . . [but] they will have an experience of using art to get to know a new community,” Duke said.

With the sounds of the Hamilton High School Gospel Choir filtering down from the terrace above, local Boy and Girl Scouts trooped the colorful banners into the Brentwood museum’s arrival plaza Friday morning. The delegates, most of them seeming a trifle stunned at all the pomp and circumstance, filed into the auditorium while images of their banners flashed on a huge overhead screen.

Before participating in a mock congressional hearing and taking a tour, the student delegates heard welcomes from Duke, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Harold Williams, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Seated onstage in an auditorium filled with 400 adults, the students looked as if someone were reading them the phone book during the opening remarks. But they livened up when comedian Michael Winslow, best known as the officer who makes sound effects in the “Police Academy” movies, took the stage.

With comical noises, Winslow quizzed students on how they created their banners, what they thought the importance of art was and the meaning of community. Some students said they talked to librarians or historians to find out more about their hometowns; others walked the streets looking for ideas.

“We didn’t really have to do a lot of research, because Delaware is so small,” said delegate Hilary Booker of Wilmington. Although the banners provided a colorful back story for the conclave, one of the Getty’s missions in holding the conference was to stress the value of art in education to the hundreds of adults present.

“Art influences us all because we get to express ourselves . . . and we see we’re all the same,” said Vanessa Febo of Brooklyn, N.Y.

“There’s many barriers in languages and in cultures, and mainly, art has no barriers,” said Scott McDonnell of Louisville, Ky. “It’s very free.”

Terry Barrett, professor of art education at Ohio State University, led a discussion about a piece of Roman sculpture onstage, which the students quickly deduced was a part of sarcophagus. And what’s a sarcophagus? Barrett asked.

“It’s a casket for dead rich people,” answered Ashley TenHaken of Great Falls, Mont.

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Later Friday, students planned to e-mail a resolution to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton asking her to declare a national day of recognition for arts education. The first lady was also to greet the delegates via videotape, a surprise for the assembled students.

Today, delegates will choose among five short downtown walking tours, then they will meet with artist John Outterbridge, one of the banner judges, at the Geffen Contemporary. They’ll have lunch at Olvera Street, see a performance by a swordsman at the Japanese American National Museum, and then visit St. Elmo Village, a Mid-City artists colony.

As they make their way throughout the city, delegates will take pictures. On Sunday, they will compose a photo collage on the walls of a small house, which will be displayed either at the Getty or another prominent Los Angeles location, Duke said.

By Friday afternoon, the students had already impressed George Kiriyama, a member of the Los Angeles school board and one of hundreds of educators invited to attend the first day’s events. Seeing the Kids Congress, he said, strengthened his resolve to add an arts coordinator to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s administration.

“I learned a lot just by listening to them,” Kiriyama said. “It was an eye-opener on my part.”