Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Michael Durkett of Saratoga has helped students reproduce some 80 artworks on the walls of Los Altos schools, including Blach Junior High School's version of "Starry Night."

Teacher called out of retirement to carry on legacy of art program

By Cecily Barnes

Saratoga resident Michael Durkett, 74, was called out of retirement three years ago to carry on the legacy of an art program he established in 1972. His innovative program assigned junior high school students the identities of great artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Auguste Renoir and Marc Chagall, and assisted them in recreating the works of these artists in the form of large murals.

The program has not only inspired and educated many students, but it has turned the hallways of Egan Intermediate School and Blach Junior High School in Los Altos into outdoor art museums.

Durkett's unique art program originated while he was an art teacher at Blach. He would designate an artist's identity to each of his students and seat them at classroom tables representing art museums, such as the Metropolitan in New York City, the Louvre in Paris, the Tate in London, the Uffizi in Florence and the Hermitage in Leningrad. The artists/students would show and discuss one another's work.

"You lose your total identity in the class," Durkett explained. "The kids were identified as famous artists. I didn't know their regular names."

In addition to reincarnating famous artists in the classroom, Durkett used to offer an extracurricular activity for eighth-graders, inviting them to recreate artistic masterpieces through an enlarged grid method of painting. It is this project that Durkett has been called out of retirement to continue.

"Brenda Dyckman, the principal of Egan Intermediate School, said the PTA was interested in developing the murals and asked if I would come back," Durkett explained. "I said yes, but only if I develop a modern art museum."

And so Durkett was welcomed back with the enthusiastic go-ahead to turn Egan's hallways into a modern art museum. His first year out of retirement, Durkett helped a group of eighth-graders adorn Egan with Van Gogh's The Drawbridge at Arles. In 1994, Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory was added to the collection, followed by Picasso's A Red Chair and Toulouse-Lautrec's The English Gentleman at the Moulin Rouge. This year, 12 students have already signed up to contribute Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand-Jatte.

"It's probably the nicest thing to see in Los Altos," Durkett said proudly.

Principal Dyckman agreed that the murals add an unmatched flavor and feeling to the school.

"The mural project has really been an opportunity to make this a beautiful setting," she said. "Everyone loves them; they're beautiful."

Durkett, who has lived in Saratoga for 36 years, couldn't be happier about what he's doing. With six grown children and seven grandchildren, two of whom are at Redwood Middle School, Durkett hopes to pass on the love of art to as many children as possible.

"The more people that get exposed to this, the more people that will be out teaching it," Durkett explained.

Durkett has already taken steps to continue the legacy. In 1980, he instructed his friend and colleague Russell Hoffman on the specifics of his art program. And last month Hoffman, who has been teaching at Blach and Egan ever since, won the State Farm Good Neighbors Award for the most innovative approach to teaching art.

"I am more than grateful to Michael for starting this," Hoffman said. "It is a darn good idea, the only good way to teach the arts."

"To me it's a legacy when you can develop a program that somebody follows," Durkett said. "[Hoffman] has followed it, and it paid off for him."

When Hoffman took over Durkett's art program 15 years ago, he revamped it to include music and literature.

"I still assign them the identity of an artist, but I also assign them the identity of a composer and a writer," Hoffman explained. "These kids research an artist, a writer and a composer. They are a composite of three famous personalities. Then, when they get to the eighth grade, they get to paint a mural."

Presently, the Los Altos school district is adorned with 90 murals, and there are more on the way.

And how long does Durkett plan to continue? "Until I die," he said.