Art classes, workshops, and one-on-one mentorship, held across the parks, gardens, and museums of New York. Taught by Ileana Lado, a first-generation Cuban-Mexican visual artist and educator from The Bronx who has spent nearly a decade teaching across the city.
This is Learning with Lado: building real technical skill, and the creative voice to make it your own. Open to anyone, from first graders to grandparents.
A seasoned teaching artist in the museum's Studio Art Program, Ileana Lado returns this fall with two ten-week courses: one for young artists and one for adults.
Bringing people together through art.
The Brooklyn Museum exists to bring people together through art, and Ileana's classes carry that into every session. Students gather in front of real works in the museum's exhibitions, talk about what they see, then head into a working art studio to make their own.
“Teaching here is a gift. We visit the galleries, learn and discuss in front of incredible artworks, and then go create our own. That is where students begin to see and think like artists.”
Ileana LadoLearn from the art in the exhibitions
Visit the exhibitions on view and study how artists work, up close.
Create in the studio
Work hands-on in a real art studio at one of New York's great museums.
Exhibit in the gallery
At the end of the semester, students exhibit their art in the museum's Education Gallery.
Painting: Passports and Paintbrushes
A trip around the world without leaving Brooklyn. Young artists travel from Japan to France, looking at how artists like Araki Hirohiko and Paul Cézanne tell stories on paper and canvas, then paint characters, landscapes, and stories of their own.
Drawing: Ink Outside the Box
Learn to see like an artist. Students build a foundation in graphite, then move into ink, with gallery visits to see how artists reimagine history and create new realities.
Registration and pricing are handled by the Brooklyn Museum. Questions? Get in touch
A teaching practice rooted in New York's cultural and educational institutions.
Nearly a decade of teaching across the city's schools, museums, and nonprofits — past and present roles below.
Classes & Mentorship
Small-group classes across the parks, gardens, and museums of Brooklyn, and one-on-one mentorship year-round.
New dates announced soon
The next round of classes is being scheduled.
Above: Land and Water, our most recent class, painting with earth pigments at Pebble Beach. August's classes have wrapped, and the next slate is in the works: drawing and watercolor for adults, family classes, and workshops for groups. Join the waitlist and you'll be the first to know when dates open, before they're posted anywhere else.
Mentorship: One-on-One Lessons Shaped Around the Student
The most personal work I do. Long-form, one-on-one guidance shaped entirely around the student: portfolio preparation for New York's specialized arts schools, or focused study in any medium, traditional or digital. Students grow in skill, in voice, and in confidence, and it shows in the work.
What People Are Saying
Recent and ongoing work.
A selection of museum classes, workshops, and mentorship from across the practice.
Objects of Reflection
Make a Splash
Portfolio Mentorship
Offsite Launch Workshop
Ileana Lado
A working artist and educator from The Bronx.
Ileana is a practicing multidisciplinary artist whose own work in drawing, painting, printmaking, and photography is rooted in documentation, lineage, and cultural memory. She teaches from inside the practice, not from a textbook, which is what lets her show students how artists actually see, decide, and make.
That artist's eye is paired with nearly a decade in the classroom. She teaches at the Brooklyn Museum and serves as an artist-in-residence with the Basquiat Project in NYC Public Schools, and through Learning with Lado she brings both sides, the artist and the teacher, to small-group classes, one-on-one mentorship, and workshops across the parks, gardens, and museums of New York.
More about Ms. Lado →