We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.

Unsubscribe any time.

Outside the Kreeger Museum’s travertine pavilions last Sunday, about 30 people—students, parents, and teachers from the Lab School and Georgetown Day School—gathered to hear D.C. sculptor Lisa Scheer talk at the unveiling of her new site-specific work, Eden—three licks of patinated copper draped over the balustrade of the museum library’s terrace. Scheer had been working with the students for four months in studio visits and workshops as part of the Kreeger’s Museum/School Partnership Project, inviting them to make their own maquettes by following her creative process. On this occasion, she hoped to disabuse them of any romantic notions they might have had about artists.

“It takes hard work to make art,” Scheer insisted. The sculptor also cautioned the crowd that getting work before a public audience takes “compromise and problem solving.”

After Scheer’s talk, the group settled in for refreshments under an old tulip tree near her sculpture. The teens, it seemed, were not so concerned with Scheer’s myth debunking—if they were ever concerned about the myth. One freshman, Tyler Gould, when asked if he wanted to study art, replied, with a sour look, “I want to be in the Army.”—Jessica Dawson