CMA continues to support the growing mobile photography community with our second CMA Photo Hunt exhibition. Last fall, CMA was the first museum in the world to present an exhibition of curated, crowdsourced photos shared using the popular photo app Instagram. Our Radical Camera exhibition served as inspiration.This time around CMA gave photographers assignments based on our Making Faces exhibition, which explores portraiture from our permanent collection. Our William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography Catherine Evans selected her favorite images and her top picks are now on view in the Community Gallery at CMA’s Center for Creativity.

Work from more than 30 mobile photographers is represented including everyone from an Instagrammer from Seattle, a former CMA Art Lab teen,  a father and daughter duo from Columbus, a math and science teacher from Toledo, an art student from Paris, a Columbus cop, commercial photographers, designers, artists, and more. The second CMA Photo Hunt exhibition will remain on view through the summer.

Read more about the inception of the Photo Hunt project in stories in The Columbus Dispatch, Art Daily, and Clic France, and Columbus Alive, and view the NBC4 story. To see a collection of all the more than 3,000 images that have been submitted since the inception of our Photo Hunts, view the CMA Photo Hunt Online Gallery.

Check the CMA blog and follow us on Instagram (columbusmuseum) for more information about new CMA Photo Hunts, and your opportunity to be selected for our next CMA Photo Hunt installation.

Questions on participating in the CMA Photo Hunts? Contact CMA Digital Communications Manager Jennifer Poleon.

Here is your fourth color-themed Photo Hunt assignment:

• Capture something that reflects “Pastel”
• Tag your work on Instagram with #CMAPhotoHunt and #Pastel
• For this fourth Color assignment you have until Friday April 19, 2013.
• Please note: images must be your own.

Once again our Photography Curator Catherine Evans will select her favorites (based on the most creative entries, and ones that best represent the theme), and your creation could grace the walls at Columbus Museum of Art.

This series of CMA Photo Hunts are all about color.  Since our Photo Hunts began we have received more than 2,500 submissions from hundreds of photographers from Seattle to Ohio to Paris. With our first exhibition last fall, we were first museum in the world to present a curated, crowdsourced installation based on the popular photo sharing app Instagram. The second CMA Photo Hunt exhibition is on display now in our Community Gallery, and features work selected by our William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography Catherine Evans.

This next round of assignments is inspired by color as the theme. Look for a new color-themed exhibition in our Big Idea Gallery this Spring featuring artists such as Frank Stella, Ed Ruscha, Edward Monet, Childe Hassam and more.  Watch for additional biweekly Photo Hunt assignments here on our blog, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with for this next Photo Hunt assignment. Happy shooting!

(Photo: Portrait of a Young Woman by Mary Cassatt from our Sirak Collection)

Our CMA Photo Hunts are back! Thanks to all who participated in the first series of CMA Photo Hunts based on our critically acclaimed The Radical Camera exhibition. Altogether we received nearly 900 submissions from more than 100 photographers. The resulting exhibition now on view through December 2012 includes more three dozen photos from nearly two dozen Columbus area photographers. The installation is the first museum show in the U.S. based on the popular photo sharing app Instagram.

This next round of assignments is based on our Making Faces, a family-friendly exhibition currently on view that explores portraits from CMA’s collection, and includes work by Diane Arbus, Roy Lichtenstein, and other noted artists. Watch for biweekly assignments here on our blog, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. (Look for additional assignments November 2, 2012; November 16, 2012, November 30, 2012, December 14, 2012, and December 28, 2012).

Here is your first Making Faces Photo Hunt assignment:

• In the spirit of the Halloween season, capture something that reflects the word “Masks”
• Tag your work on Instagram with #CMAPhotoHunt and #Masks
• For this first Making Faces assignment you have until Friday November 02, 2012.
• Please note: images must be your own. Columbus Museum of Art

Once again our Photography Curator Catherine Evans will select her favorites (based on the most creative entries, and ones that best represent the theme), and your creation could grace the walls at Columbus Museum of Art.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with for this next series of Photo Hunts! Happy shooting!

(Photo: Halloween, South Side by Marvin E. Newman, Columbus Museum of Art Photo League Collection)

I am a museum nerd. I work at an art museum and I love museums of all kinds – art museums (of course), history museums, house museums, science museums and on and on. Whenever I travel I search them out… and sometimes they find me. Over the past week I travelled to Boston for a wedding and much to my elation the wedding took place at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum, a cool little car museum. During the trip I made the time to go to three museums and found myself getting excited each time I saw a road sign, map marker, or billboard advertising another museum on my journey. It was when I found myself swooning over a billboard for a Zippo museum that: 1) I realized I need to get this museum fascination thing under control and 2) I began wondering exactly what is it that makes my heart skip a beat whenever I see a museum.

Then I had my aha moment. It’s curiosity. Museums not only allow me to explore my existing curiosities (such as art museums), they also allow me to build new curiosities and discover things about the world that I may otherwise never be interested in or exposed to (did you know there was a car built in 1906 that included a drawing room and a toilet?)

The capability of museums to spark our imaginations, new interests, questions and curiosities is not only exciting but essential. Tony Wagner author of The Global Achievement Gap, lists curiosity as one of the Seven Survival Skills for today’s students. Wagner states that employees “have to be new and improved knowledge workers—those who can think in disciplined ways but also those who have a burning curiosity, a lively imagination, and can engage others empathetically. Clay Parker, the president of the Chemical Management Division of BOC Edwards states “I want people who can think—they’re not just bright, they’re also inquisitive. Are they engaged, are they interested in the world?”

Regardless of whether it is at an art museum, science center or your local historical society get out there, go to a museum and be curious.

Art Speaks. Join the Conversation.

-Jessimi Jones, Educator for Teacher and School Partnerships