Every year, art students pick pieces from well-known (and lesser known) classic and contemporary artists and create their own version. For many of the students who have never visited an art gallery, the museum allows them to explore art and participate in it.
Today, the museum features 160 murals (with 8 new ones being added every year) and art is one of the most popular classes in school. In 2003, the city of Manteca followed the school's lead and established a downtown mural project to beautify the city. In 2008, the creative teacher and founder of the high School Mural Museum, Mr. Kirt Giovannoni was honored with an "Hero in Education" award.
Here are some of the pictures we took (in no particular order).
Walking the high school grounds is a learning experience not only for high school students. The author of this waymark admits that he only knew eleven of the more than 100 featured artists. We filled that gap after our visit and thinking that there might be others like us, we linked wikipedia biographies to every artist we took a picture of. (Couldn't find anything about Ferinand Legar, though.) Click on the picture for a larger image and click on the name for the biography. Also, check out the museum's website for a lot more pictures.
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