Museums and Schools as Universal Partners in Art Education

Abstract

Hurrah and hallelujah, museum education is going to sock-it-toya! This could very well be a banner motto because throughout the world, museum education is on an upward spiral of exciting, stimulating, and thought-provoking discovery-based art education. Although museum education is usually as diversified as the varieties of art collections in museums throughout the world, American, Canadian, and particularly European art museums are actively at work promoting art education to a place that is high on their lists of priorities. It is equally gratifying to discover, as I have done in traveling, researching, and teaching in museums, that the educational role of museums in most countries is often placed well above the traditional roles of collecting, exhibiting, and preserving. Gone, or at least going, are the tomb-like environments, the temples of art, the dusty cabinets of curiosities that were amassed in the past for only the enlightened few. Going, going, and almost gone are the efforts of an over-worked education staff merely to provide walk and gawk school tours for endless lines of mesmerized children. Gone are the art galleries used only as lecture halls to preach about art. Museum educators are proud of their present-day diversified educational programs and their sensory-based approaches to encountering art. They are also very determined to reach individuals with personal processes towards the appreciation of art works in their collections.