The Addison Project

Tang Fellow María Martínez originally created The Addison Project to utilize Phillips Academy’s Addison Gallery of American Art as a tool for helping students develop their language skills through interdisciplinary work. The Addison Project evolved, however, and now curriculums will not be limited to Spanish courses; they will be tailored to help courses across departments engage with the museum. By designing flexible lesson plans, Martínez intends to make it easier for Phillips Academy faculty to use the museum.

Benefits

The Addison Project’s curriculums will help students develop visual literacy and strengthen their ability to interpret and understand visual information. As an expressly interdisciplinary project, the curriculums will benefit many disciplines and departments by creating bridges to a powerful resource on the Andover campus.

Challenges

Collaboration requires alignment among constituents, and alignment is a process. Intentionality will ensure curriculums are well tuned to the needs of the Andover community.

Takeaways & Best Practices

The Addison Project is advancing interdisciplinary practice across the Andover curriculum. Interdisciplinarity is essential for students’ working lives, especially in rapidly changing industries.

The Addison Project helps students develop visual literacy. Visual literacy is a way for students and faculty to engage in the interpretation and understanding of visual information, an essential skill in our increasingly media-based culture.

The Addison Project advances the arts by demonstrating how the study of visual art can cross academic disciplines.

Bottom Line

The Addison project helps faculty use a valuable Phillips Academy resource to help students develop visual literacy.