The Violette de Mazia Foundation teaches aesthetic appreciation to any interested student: from academics and senior citizens to school students and prison inmates.

We teach students to read visual information objectively and to describe their discoveries. We teach specific tools that develop and assist perception. These tools enable students to uncover the art in works of art and in their everyday experiences.

The Violette de Mazia Foundation’s programming advances the theories and experiential educational methods developed by John Dewey, Dr. Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia. A meticulous analysis of the objective facts in a work of art occurs as students ask questions, discuss perceptions and carefully observe the artwork they are trying to understand. Inquiry, experimentation, discussion and practice facilitate mastery of the method.

Alumni tell us that the de Mazia program “changes their lives” by making art accessible wherever they encounter it, whether that be in a museum or in their backyard. They say what was invisible to them in works of art they now see and understand--unaided by anything more than the tools they master, their own senses, and their own life experience.

After taking our course, one Graterford Prison student said that we put a window in his cell.

The theories underlying this approach declare art appreciation important for everyone regardless of academic or economic standing. Firmly committed to the idea that life and art are inextricably linked, the Violette de Mazia Foundation’s programs are predicated on the principle that education is a lifelong activity of growth, development and change, and that enriching this aspect of life is a prerequisite to developing an intelligent society.