Art Museum Education Research Articles

What Counts as a Theme in Art Museum Education?

What Counts as a Theme in Art Museum Education?

What Counts as a Theme in Art Museum Education?

Thematic education programs are increasingly common in art museums across the world, especially when it comes to programs for schools. Currently, however, there is no consensus as to what constitutes a valid theme. This article makes explicit four different conceptions of the term “theme” that underlie current art museum education programming. These include: (1) Themes in a literary sense, (2) Themes in the musical sense, (3) Themes in the Modernist sense, and (4) Creative process as theme. Following an explanation of each category, the author reflects on the affordances and limits of each kind of theme for both interpretation and museum-school connections.

Art of Local Radiance: The Teacher’s Guide to the Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion

Exploring the Glass City: The Teacher’s Guide to the Glass Pavilion, published in 2008 to celebrate the opening of the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion, exemplifies the museum’s multidisciplinary approach to public art museum education. This research narrative about the teacher’s guide unfolds in three levels. The first, autoethnography, relates aspects of personal history with the Toledo Museum of Art. The second level links four generations of family history to the social history of Toledo, Ohio. Curricular questions in the guide are used to rethink family history in relation to social movements, labor struggles, economic trends, and environmental change. The third level discusses ways of teaching art that allow students to make connections between self, family, place, and society through the study and creation of art. At every level, the narrative grapples with questions of how to bring the personal and political together in an embodied teaching practice. This task is complicated by an understanding of identity as produced through active networks of time, place, and matter.

Early Childhood Development and Art Museum Education Program: Implications from the Programs in the United States

Early Childhood Development and Art Museum Education Program: Implications from the Programs in the United States

Art Museum Education in Transition

This essay examines the educational practices at the Moderna galerija, a national museum of modern and contemporary art in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in the last twenty years. Its aim is to reflect on the museum education in relation to broader historical context, of the former Yugoslavia (the country Slovenia was a part of until 1991) and discuss how social, political, and economic changes affected art museum education today. A special emphasis is given to the art museum's educational practices in the 1970s, which embodied the socialist doctrine of “education to the people.” After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the development of the profession depended on the individual states. The author briefly mentions two museums in the former state where educational practices present case studies of good practice. The main part of the essay concentrates on selected case studies carried out at the Moderna galerija. With the prospects of overcoming the present difficult economical situation, the author hopes that museum educators in the territories of the former Yugoslavia will again find the way to collaborate, appreciate what was worth keeping in the common legacy, and join forces to critically respond to the rising commercialization and popularization representing a threat to all new states in transition.

Art Museum Education in Transition

This essay examines the educational practices at the Moderna galerija, a national museum of modern and contemporary art in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in the last twenty years. Its aim is to reflect on the museum education in relation to broader historical context, of the former Yugoslavia (the country Slovenia was a part of until 1991) and discuss how social, political, and economic changes affected art museum education today. A special emphasis is given to the art museum's educational practices in the 1970s, which embodied the socialist doctrine of “education to the people.” After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the development of the profession depended on the individual states. The author briefly mentions two museums in the former state where educational practices present case studies of good practice. The main part of the essay concentrates on selected case studies carried out at the Moderna galerija. With the prospects of overcoming the present difficult economical situation, the author hopes that museum educators in the territories of the former Yugoslavia will again find the way to collaborate, appreciate what was worth keeping in the common legacy, and join forces to critically respond to the rising commercialization and popularization representing a threat to all new states in transition.

Professional Organizations and the Professionalizing of Practice

The establishment of the Museum Education Roundtable (MER) in 1969, the formation of the Committee on Education of the American Association of Museums (AAM) in 1973, and the creation of the Museum Education Division of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) in 1981 all represent milestones in the professionalization of museum education practice. Each organization has contributed to framing the profession's standards and guiding its direction. By the turn of the last century, art museum educators had at last transformed the uncertainties of their field into possibilities.

Rethinking Critical Thinking and Its Role in Art Museum Education

Meaningful interactions with works of art are often absent from education. Across the country, art museums are intent on changing this situation. But to incorporate art viewing1 into an educational milieu that does not value art, art museum educators are constantly forced to justify the educational value of their programs. One common argument to substantiate the worth of art viewing is that it promotes critical thinking. In fact, several museums across the United States assert that the goal of their education programs is precisely to foster critical thinking in students.2 These assertions are aligned with a growing body of research that proves that encounters with works of art can help develop skills associated with critical thinking.3 According to Willingham, critical thinking consists of “seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, [and] deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts.” In sync with this definition,4 the research shows that guided dialogues about art can promote skills, including observation, questioning, association, inference, evidential reasoning, and openness to multiple perspectives. The link between certain art viewing programs and the development of particular critical thinking skills is thus unquestionable. This said, it is one thing to recognize this link and quite another to say that art viewing matters because it fosters critical thinking skills. In this essay I will critique the notion that the purpose and contribution of art museum education is to develop discrete critical thinking skills in students. I will articulate several problems inherent to this idea and conclude by inviting museum educators to embrace a broader vision of their work.

Illustrating Interpretive Inquiry: A Reflection for Art Museum Education

Abstract Acknowledging that the purpose and form of inquiry processes can vary across and within disciplines, this article focuses on interpretive inquiry: the kind of inquiry conducted to interpret works whose reading is not “rigidly pre‐established and ordained” by a set of cultural references, but rather invite “freedom of reception” (Eco 1989, 6). Through comparison of two real‐life inquiries, the author shines a light on the distinctive features of interpretive inquiry. These include a web‐like meaning making process, a reliance on analogies and metaphors, and the possibility of accepting uncertainty as part of the work’s meaning. Implications for art museum education practice are explored.

The Laboratory on 53rd Street: Victor D’Amico and the Museum of Modern Art, 1937–1969

Abstract This essay addresses the pioneering work of Victor D’Amico, the first director of education at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and an influential art educator. During his tenure at MoMA, D’Amico explored the role of museums in developing creativity through direct aesthetic experience and the larger social implications of art museum education. Victor D’Amico led the Education Project at MoMA, which began as a part‐time school partnership program in 1937. By the time he retired in 1969, he had become an internationally recognized leader in the field of art museum education. Yet today his influence is little known and seldom discussed. This essay focuses on two important programs he developed at MoMA: his most widely acclaimed and influential program, the Children’s Art Carnival (1942‐1969), and the groundbreaking art education television series Through the Enchanted Gate (1952‐1953).

The Museum Visit: It’s an Experience, Not a Lesson

Abstract Museums offer visitors direct experiences—such as visual experiences—that are not available elsewhere in daily life. Learning through verbal information is part of it, yet the aesthetic experience is always outside of the “right‐answer paradigm.” Cognitive development occurs when perceptions inform thinking, thoughts are expressed in language, and expressed thoughts invite reconsideration of the material at hand. Both science and art require the development of these skills. Science and art museum educators can and should advocate the value of looking, thinking, wondering about complexity, and discussing the results.

Beyond Science: Implications of the LSIE Report for Art Museum Education

Abstract The Learning Science in Informal Environments report holds great potential for creating change among those who work in the field of science education. But to what extent can it inform other sectors of the informal education world? This article explores how the LSIE report might influence research and practice in art museums. By comparing the report to a recent study in art education, the authors point out areas of overlap and divergence relative to content and skills, identity, and communities of practice. We suggest several implications for how art museums and science museums might learn from one another. A call to action is made for further research and discussion about common learning goals and outcomes for the art museum experience.

Sufficient Foundation: Theory in the Practice of Art Museum Education

Abstract Three groups of museum educators were invited to list theories that inform their practice at annual conventions of the National Art Education Association and at a workshop sponsored by the Museum Educators of Southern California. Most educators cited psychological theories of learning, beginning with Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and Csikszentmihalyi’s flow or psychology of optimal experience, stage theories of development beginning with Piaget, and constructivist theories of learning and meaning making beginning with Dewey, Vygotsky, and Falk and Dierking’s contextual model of free choice learning. There was little evidence of interest in critical pedagogy or in other critical theories that problematize our understanding of art, art history, or the nature and function of museums. Museum educators have adopted theories to which they have been exposed through their education and professional networking, which facilitate their practical work as educators, and which are easy to implement, such as the questions to guide novice viewers in Housen and Yenawine’s Visual Thinking Strategies. Educators do not cite theories which might address their professionalstatus within their museums or the position of their institutions within a global economy.

Poking Holes in the Oil Paintings: The Case for Critical Theory in Postmodern Art Museum Education

Abstract This article discusses the theory and practice of transformative postmodern museum education, presented as a necessary response to contemporary society in which multiple perspectives have made modernist philosophies and practices of museum education largely irrelevant. I make a deconstructivist analysis of the history of museum education by describing modernist notions of museums and their educational roles. I then propose a definition and explication of a pedagogy of postmodern art museum education that casts the project of art education and the museum within frameworks of challenge, inquiry, and resistance that stimulate interpretations of art to take place in the wider context of everyday life.

“The Challenge of Creating a New Kind of Museum”: Installed Interpretives for Adults in the Denver Art Museum’s New Hamilton Building

Abstract This article looks at the process of creating installed interpretives for adults in the Denver Art Museum’s new Frederic C. Hamilton Building, which opened in October 2006. Using "serving the visitor with choice" as their guiding principle, Denver Art Museum educators developed interpretives that explored four different areas: connecting visitors with artists, engaging visitor creativity, incorporating multiple voices, and engaging visitor responses. Educators conducted small-sample tests to help them uncover problems with their prototypes and act quickly to resolve them. Evaluations of a poetry-writing activity gave educators insight into a multifaceted problem: Despite the fact that adults report enjoying interactives when asked to try them as part of visitor testing, they are reticent to attempt these activities on their own. Meanwhile, testing an activity designed to inform and elicit visitors’ responses to a controversial painting unearthed a critical flaw in the design. Finally, three novel installations experimented with different ways of using video to humanize the art.

From periphery to center: art museum education in the 21st century

From periphery to center: art museum education in the 21st century

The Early History of Docents in American Art Museums: 1890-1930

This article examines the origins of docents in America; identifies the first people called docents and traces the development of docentry during the first formative decades of its existence. Originally, all docents were men, and the use of docents represents a very early example of Progressive social policy. Rather than a mere footnote of art museum education in this country, docentry provided a fundamental foundation for its origins. The purpose of this research study is to supplement an incomplete history of art museum education. This study aids museum educators in accurately forming a historical perspective of docents.

Complete Engagement: Embodied Response in Art Museum Education

(2007). Complete Engagement: Embodied Response in Art Museum Education. Art Education: Vol. 60, In-Between, pp. 46-56.

Negotiating Personal and Cultural Significance: A Theoretical Framework for Art Museum Education

This article presents a theoretical framework for those who facilitate engagements with works of art. The aim is to help facilitators negotiate potential differences between the original meaning(s) of an artwork and the fresh interpretations spectators articulate. The author applies Umberto Eco's ideas about literary texts to instances of interpretation in the visual arts. Eco suggests that the implications of unexpected readings change in different situations. Therefore, the facilitators' challenge is in discovering how to handle each individual encounter. To this end, facilitators may wish to ponder: What meaning does the new interpretation conflict with? And what is the distance between the cultural conventions of spectators and the conventions that framed the creation of the work? Real world examples are used to shed light on these questions and their significance.

Thinking Through Art: Transforming Museum Curriculum

What kinds of programming should an art museum's education department offer to the K-12 school community? How can we best contribute to students' current and future intellectual development? What type of programming best fits the needs of students and teachers, while also addressing the unique aspects of the museum setting?