Your new class is before you, notebooks and sharpened pencils at the ready. Attendance has been recorded, and you are poised to begin. Some of the faces turn toward you with enthusiasm; some appear to have skipped breakfast and a good night’s sleep. You open your mouth to begin. A …
Over the past ten years, there has been a major movement in museum education departments to address family audiences. As museums increase the number of special events, self-guided tours, workshops, and activities designed specifically for families, docents must master touring techniques for groups composed of both adults and children. Family …
Recent research on families and museums, as well as my work at the Oakland Museum of California, confirms that it is the family visit, not the school field trip, that influences whether or not a child will grow up to be a museum-visiting adult. But museums must do more than …
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, located in Brunswick, Maine, is an integral part of Bowdoin College, a four-year co-educational liberal arts institution established 1794. The Museum’s art collection is encyclopedic in scope ranging from classical antiquities to significant holdings of American and European paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and …
Each year, the education department of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln provides tours to approximately 1 ,000 first-year students enrolled in a program entitled University Foundations. The University Foundations program is a course designed to develop “the student’s ability to …
Kevin Sorrow, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Georgia, passes by the Georgia Museum of Art, located in the historic quadrangle of the university, every day on his way to class or downtown Athens. Although he had been curious about the museum since he started his college career over …
Expect More Museum-School Partnerships The 1994 U.S. Congress made $100 million available for school and community partnerships, as part of its Goals 2000 legislation. Created to improve the quality of education as we move into the 21st century, the legislation encourages schools to take advantage of community resources and connect …
Why do we as museum educators and docents believe fiercely in the value of gallery talks with adults? Simply stated, because we have seen them work. We have had visitors tell us that having someone “explain the objects’” or show them “what to look for” has changed their lives. Such …
Remember those times in the galleries when your temperature rises in response to a tour participant? How annoying; they just don’t get it. They can’t see your point. Their behavior seems off track, picky, flaky, rigid, out of touch, or unresponsive. How irritating. Perhaps what you have experienced is simply …
Imagine standing next to a work of contemporary art. The work is particularly perplexing. You find the work difficult to comprehend, and yet it is your responsibility as a docent to explain it to others who wander by. “I could do that; why it this thing in an art gallery?!” …
People learn best by “doing.” Need proof? Consider how most of us learn to use a computer. We don’t just read the instruction manual, memorize it, and then turn the machine on. We learn in a series of back-and-forth steps, where something we want to do compels us to find …