K-12 Teachers, UA Students Invited to Apply for Paul Jones Art Fellowship

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Teachers working in Tuscaloosa City Schools and University of Alabama students are invited to apply for a 2015 Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art K-12 Fellowship.

The K-12 Fellows program provides opportunities for teachers working in Tuscaloosa City Schools to develop innovative curricula inspired by the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at UA.

Fellowships provide budgetary assistance to implement project-based learning in the classroom and at the Paul R. Jones Gallery of Art in Tuscaloosa. Fellowships also pair teachers with UA undergraduate and graduate students to support implementation.

Applications are due May 1 and can be found online at http://paulrjonescollection.as.ua.edu/apply/.

The program was launched in fall 2014 when a group of elementary and middle school students from Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary and Westlawn Middle School visited the Paul R. Jones Gallery.

The students viewed a selection of works from the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art that focused on the theme of identity, then returned to their classrooms to create their own works of art based on the theme. Their work was exhibited at the gallery in December, and a reception was held for students, parents and Tuscaloosa City Schools officials.

The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of 20th-century African-American art in the world. It includes some 2,100 works of art valued at $10.3 million that were donated to UA in 2008 by the late Paul Raymond Jones, a native of Bessemer and a longtime resident of Atlanta.

Jones was known as a passionate collector and has been described by Art & Antiques magazine as “one of the top art collectors in the country.”

The K-12 Fellows program was created to fulfill Jones’s dream that his collection would serve as a resource for Alabamians and as a way to educate students about the importance of art in life.

For more information, contact Dr. Lucy Curzon, director of education and outreach for the Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art, via email at lcurzon@ua.edu.

The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships and Goldwater Scholarships.