Visual Art students take trip to Germany, Poland

Junior Heather Blockhus (left to right), freshmen Abby Yacoe and Lizzie Jeffrey, and juniors Marielle Beaulieu, Ali Nesmith and Chloe Langston visit Wroclaw, Poland as a class.

Visual Arts students traveled to Germany and Poland for 16 days from Wednesday, April 7 to Thursday, April 22 to expand their art education.

Visual Arts teacher Christine An designed a private tour for her students to experience and learn about art in the cities of Central Europe. The average cost per student for this trip was $2,800. Around 30 students and 6 chaperones went on the tour.

“Our itinerary was scheduled so that we could go to all the art museums and other art education sights,” An said.

During the first few days, the students toured Berlin, Germany. There, they visited the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, a museum dedicated to the era of the Berlin Wall. In order to learn about

German paintings, the students also visited Alte Nationalgalerie and Gemaldegalerie.

The next major city the group went to was Wroclaw, Poland, where they visited the National Museum and the Panorama Raclawicka, home to one of the largest collections of Polish art. They also stayed at Krakow, where they toured the only major city that escaped devastation during World War II.

“The museums we visited showed artwork pertaining to the culture,” junior Simon Zorin said. “Churches and cathedrals we saw also exposed us to different styles and patterns of architecture, giving us a closer look at the artistic style incorporated into the buildings and the culture.”

Other cities the students visited included Potsdam, Leipzig and Dresden of Germany as well as Auschwitz of Poland and Olomouc of the Czech Republic.

“We learned a lot about the history of the cities we visited and we got to experience a lot of the real culture rather than just tourist spots,” senior Ellie Fung said.

When the group visited Poland, it had the opportunity to experience a special side of Polish culture as the country was mourning the death of the Polish President and political leaders from a plane crash.

Although the group’s original plan was to leave for Berlin on Wednesday, April 7 and return from the trip by Friday, April 16, they returned from Krakow, Poland on Thursday, April 22. This was because the airport the students were to depart from was one of the many European airports that was shut down due to ashes from an Icelandic volcano nearby. The group was able to return on a flight which departed on Wednesday, April 21.

While stuck in Europe, the group spontaneously planned trips to Prague, Strasbourg, and Heidelberg.