Classes
Exhibitions, while diverse and frequently changing, only constituted part of the Roswell Museum’s programming. Public education was equally important to the Community Art Center project. The Roswell Museum began offering gallery tours and talks soon after its opening, but the FAP strongly encouraged it to organize art classes as well.
After considerable planning and negotiation, the museum started offering classes in late 1938, with courses covering subjects such as drawing, painting, sculpture, and interior design. Since the original museum building did not include classroom space, instructors taught at different locations around town, with sites including the Armory building, the Junior High School, and the San Juan School in Chihuahita, a primarily Hispanic neighborhood. The Museum’s first art instructors, Abraham Slifkin and John Marfyak, were from New York, as part of an exchange program with the New York Art Project. Local instructors also taught classes as the education program developed.
Surviving attendance lists show that a core of consistent students attended the classes, with women comprising the largest percentage of enrollment. Of the three sites, the San Juan School appears to have been especially excited about offering art classes to children.
Drawing and painting appear to have been the most consistently popular classes, with an average of 15-20 students attending each session. The sculpture classes focused primarily on clay modeling with an armature, making plaster castings, and other additive techniques, though several students did express an interest in carving wood or stone. The home decorating class provided an overview of interior design. Students saved clippings from magazines and newspapers as examples, and their final project consisted of making a scale model of a room.
