About
Who am I?
Born and raised in upstate New York at the foothills of the Adirondacks, I was blessed with a mother who introduced me to art making and art history at a young age through visits to museums and enrollment in extra curricular activities. I discovered my passion for education through teaching undergraduate art history courses while enrolled in graduate programs at Columbia University and The City College of New York. While at Columbia, a lecturing internship in Precolumbian and African Art brought me into the Metropolitan Museum of Art galleries as an educator, and I’ve never left. After graduating from the two-year acting program at Circle in the Square Theater School, I joined the teaching artist faculty at Lincoln Center in theater and, eventually, visual art. I’ve been an art maker all of my life. I love to sing and dance and make theater and visual art. My passion in the visual arts is for exploring materials and techniques. I like to learn about traditions and invent new ways of doing things.
What do I do?
As a contractual museum educator at the Met for more than twenty years, I create and facilitate programs for school groups, teens, family programs, public festivals and access audiences. Each year, I also a mentor a cohort of NYC teachers as part of the the Met’s social justice-focused Professional Learning Community program. As a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Education, Theater Development Fund and Manhattan Theater Club, I create curricula and partner with teachers in the classroom to work with students at all levels of education, Pre-K through Master’s Degrees! I love exploring and making art with people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities and I feel incredibly lucky to do so.
Why online courses?
I’ve been teaching online theater residencies for a couple of years to an English class at the tip of Long Island because the travel time to and from the school would have made the Lion King unit that they do each year impossible. In March, I began creating and filming Lincoln Center Pop-Up Classroom episodes designed for elementary school students. I also started to record asynchronous learning videos for students with whom I could not longer meet and teaching in Google Classroom to those with whom I could. While I do prefer coming together in person around works of art, I am eagerly exploring the possibilities of online teaching and learning. This fall, I can’t be doing what I love in person in the museum, nor in the schools, so I’m taking up the challenge of doing it virtually by creating engaging and fun online museum-based curricula. I’ll be combining my training as an art historian, my work as an actor, playwright and director, my study of inquiry-based teaching strategies and my inherent love of learning and being in community with others to do so.
I'm looking forward to bringing art to life with you!
-Taryn
Check out my Lincoln Center Pop Up Classroom episodes.
Art Making with Ms. Taryn
A couple of my programs at The Met
Digital Storytelling
summer program
Mission
To serve my students in learning more about themselves and the world around them through engaging educational experiences with a liberatory pedagogy.
Vision
Vibrant, empathic, curiosity-driven learning communities in which all voices are sought, heard and supported.
Values
- respect
- integrity
- community