Well, I should say you did it. After a successful Kickstarter campaign (thank you!), months of work digitizing issues of The Docent Educator, putting the issues in a searchable format, organizing them into Web publishable pages, creating PDFs for downloads, printing books for high level donors (in two volumes!) we …
Every five years Museum-Ed surveys the field of art museum educational programming in the U.S. and Europe. This survey is the third in 15 years, and tracks changes in art museum educational programming over time. Be a part of this historic survey and tell us about educational programming in your museum. …
We did it! You all came through, and we successfully funded the digitization of The Docent Educator. Stay tuned for updates, and funder rewards, and thank you all for your support. When we started this effort we thought it might demonstrate this community’s appetite for supporting projects we all believe …
A “How-To” from the Creators of Verso Job roles for museum creatives don’t tend to jibe mid course. Instead, most of us chart a trajectory and steer it to shore, adapting along the way. But what if a tool emerges that capsizes conventions and puts in play skills waiting to …
The impulse to connect events in the news to works of art in museums is common among art museum educators, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has created a team to bring that impulse to life. Every Wednesday in the NewsRoom, a conference room lined with white boards and …
by Guest Blogger Dina Rose Friedman 2013 wasn’t shaping up to be a great year. Almost 16 years to the day that I was hired as Site Director for author Washington Irving’s home, Sunnyside, I was downsized. I quickly went through the Elizabeth Kubler Ross stages of grief adapted for …
There are a few sweet treats among these in honor of the holiday season. All the Rowboats The Art of Reproduction Mapping the Wind (Long load time but it’s worth it.) Su Blackwell’s book sculpture People of the Art Museum Watching this and this Behind the Wire Flight Delay Next trip 3D …
While I was writing my guide to interpretive writing about art, I started a list of “museum speak” – words that are common among museum workers but often confound the public. (Read this guide online now in your current browser or download a printable pdf.) The list never made it …
Couldn’t make it to the conference? Watch it here. Art Museums and Distance Learning Pt. 1 Art Museums and Distance Learning Pt. 2 Crystal Bridges partnered with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s National Center for Research on Rural Education to conduct an extensive literature review of museums and distance learning. You …
Here’s a problem I’ve been mulling over for years. Imagine you’re a teacher and you’re looking for online resources about ancient Egypt for your students. You’re aware that museums have ancient Egyptian artifacts in their collections, and vaguely aware that museums sometimes put resources for teachers on their websites. Where …
There are so many great stories to tell about my month-long residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. (http://www.gardnermuseum.org/news/2013/july_2013) Which one to share? One of the best is about the lady herself, and how her amazing legacy lives on in the vision of the Gardner staff. When Isabella Stewart Gardner assembled …
I thought you might enjoy a sneak peek of what I’ve been working on as educator-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Here’s an excerpt from the guide to interpretive writing, more to come! Authenticity Lack of authenticity implies a lack of respect for your audience. If you …
I’m spending the month of June as the educator-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The task I’ve set for myself is to produce some guides for interpretive writing about art, to be published here on Museum-Ed. I started the month by watching Arts and the Mind (2012), …
The Museum-Ed Discussion List is Museum-Ed’s most popular resource by far. Every month we recap the “Hot Topic” from the Discussion List for the Museum Education Monitor (MEM). If you don’t subscribe to the MEM, do consider it – it’s an invaluable resource on museum education research. Check it out …
Here’s a new favorites* list in honor of AAM in Baltimore next week. If you’re there are whiling away the time between sessions, this should entertain you. If you’re not there, this should console you. Natural Histories: Rare Books from the AMNH Library The Embroidered Color Wheel Tate’s WonderMind Roanoke, …
by Troy Smythe I’m reflecting on current trends in art museum educator career paths while listening to The Puppini Sisters’ version of “I Will Survive” (which lives in my Killer Cocktails playlist, I’ll pause here while you find it on iTunes). As an independent consultant I sometimes embed myself into …
On December 4 and 5, 2012 the leadership of sixteen internationally recognized U.S., European and Canadian art museum education organizations came together in Austin, Texas to establish communication channels to work together in the future to support our common goals. Organizations that serve the needs of art museum educators, whether …
During the recent NAEA museum pre-conference day in Fort Worth TX, attendees participated in a co-creation exercise in the galleries of the Modern Art Museum. It was so much fun I had to share it. Liz Lloyd from the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio TX passed out little …
I’m a big fan of cooking blogs, and have been inspired by Heidi Swanson’s Favorites Lists over at 101 Cookbooks. She occassionally publishes a list of cool stuff she’s run across that may or may not have anything to do with 101 Cookbooks. So I started my own Favorites …
Here’s a great little book we never knew we needed. Seems that writing about teaching in the art museum is not missing in our field lately… …with the National Art Education Association’s From Periphery to Center published just a few years ago, and decent coverage on the topic in journals …
I opened AAM’s recent issue of Museum News (November-December 2011) and was immediately drawn to Eric Ledbetter’s essay (opinion piece?) “Let Us Now Praise Museum Authority” (p. 21). Part of what drew me to the page was the words Excellence and Equity in the first sentence, words that all museum …
Co-authored by Sheila McGuire, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts At the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, iPads are going on tours with the express purpose of enabling tour guides to use multimedia to enhance their tours. The program was actually a research project, and below is a down and dirty list …
If you’re a fan of John Stewart on the Daily Show you’ve seen his critique of CNN and its use (or misuse) of social media. On a recent show Stewart played a clip of CNN summarizing three major news stories, then inviting viewers to text their choice of the story …
Last weekend was a big one for me, the weekend of the annual Minnesota Horse Expo at the State Fair grounds in St. Paul. Yes, I am a horse owner and am obsessed with training my horse. I learn so much about learning from the process of training my horse. …
I spent last Friday afternoon sifting through over 100 digital images of Chinese ceramic vases looking for the one a client wanted to link to their educational newsletter online. The newsletter has always been published online on another site, but the educators who authored the newsletter didn’t include accession numbers …
We ended our Museum-Ed Interpretive Writing Workshop a week ago last Friday, whereupon I lit out for a week of camping in a remote wilderness with no access to any technology beyond some waterproof matches. Now that I’m back, renewed and refreshed, I’m happy to post these guidelines created by …
When my partner, Scott Sayre, worked at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (I’m sure they wouldn’t mind me telling this story) they were just gearing up to digitize the collection. Presenting digital images of the museum’s works of art meant that they had to request rights for many of them. …
I was talking to my friend Jim Hakala on the phone today, and we were batting around the idea of a Wiki here on Museum-Ed that would let the community participate in writing a definition of museum education. That may yet happen, but Jim told me about a project that …
Fiction, and reading in general, is getting more and more play in museums these days, and I am so glad for it. Maybe it’s just art museums but I am seeing more and more book clubs and discussion groups organized by and meeting at museums. The Walker Art Center here …
Pipe Cleaners, Googly Eyes Cut From Elementary School Arts Budget This headline appeared on the front page of the Onion’s August 16th issue here in Minneapolis. Besides being hysterical, it’s a sad commentary on the state of art education these days. The Onion is so effective at being thigh-slapping funny …
O.K. my AAM 2007 presentation, called “How Teachers and Students Use Museum Web Sites” is too long to put into one blog so I’ve split it into two parts. Also, it’s just now occurred to me that I should have put all these notes into my PowerPoint, because if I …
(Slide 11) Many museum resources aren’t used because teachers can’t find them. Museums, and maybe especially art museums, are notoriously bad at indexing their sites so that when teachers and students Google a keyword or phrase, the museum site appears in the search returns. It’s also important to realize that …
In my experience teachers often don’t use museum Web sites simply because they can’t find them. Here’s our successful method of linking online museum resources into other online resources so that teachers have an easier time searching for them. (This has been posted previously on the Museum-Ed Discussion List, please …
We just returned from a couple weeks in Spain, where we had our first visit to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It was so exciting I feel I must share it. The museum is spectacular, but what I really want to tell you all about is the interpretive space for Richard …
I’m reading Ruth Clark’s Building Expertise—Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement. Clark, a specialist in instructional design, reminds us that our goals for docents include encoding long-term memory and aiding transfer (a learner’s ability to apply acquired knowledge in a variety of situations such as a docent might encounter …