museums and the goals of art education

National Art Education Association

Museums and the Goals of Art EducationAuthor(s): Terry ZellerSource: Art Education, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 50-55Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193035 .

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Museums and the Goals of

Art Education

Terry Zeller

By using the interactive units in the High Museum's Sensations gallery, students discover how visual artists use the senses and sensory perception to communicate.

50 Art Education January 1987

The NAEA's goals for quality art education call for all elementary and secondary

r

schools to require students to complete a sequential course of instruction that integrates art history, criticism, aesthetics, and art production. Teaching facts, concepts, skills, attitudes, and using resources that are intrinsic to the visual arts and related to the humanities and performing arts should be the aim of art in general education. Such instruction and learning opportunities would assure that all students would be able to fully participate in what A Nation at Risk calls the "Learning Society."

It is the premise of this article that not only can museum learning contribute to NAEA's goals but that it should be an integral part of all school art programs and should not be treated as enrichment, supplement, or a mere resource for the classroom art program. Since art in general education does not intend to create either vocational or avocational artists, but to develop citizens who are visually literate, aesthetically sensitive, aware of their artistic heritage in the widest sense, able to make discriminating aesthetic judgments, and capable of giving individual visual expression to ideas and feelings, museums and other cultural institutions should be central to any art program in the schools. While after graduation few students actually practice artmaking, many do visit museums on a regular basis. Such visitation, particularly among disadvantaged youth, might well be increased if students were given knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed to become discriminating life-long patrons of museums.

The advantages of teaching art history, criticism, and aesthetics with the original works of art found in museums are obvious. If students are to learn about and value art, they cannot be taught by using only reproductions but should have the opportunity to study and experience original works of art. It is also important that students experience the ambience of the art museum. But museums are more than storehouses of "the real thing" or sources of slide kits and other visual resource materials. The human resources of museums are



also important. Museum educators are making

significant contributions to the achievement of NAEA's goals for quality art education. This article, which is based on the educational materials sent to the author by thirty- five American art museums, documents these contributions. The material was gathered for a presentation to a session of the States Assembly Leadership Workshop held at the 1986 NAEA Conference in New Orleans. Museum-School Partnerships Museums are no longer merely offering the standard walk-and-galk tours that have been the mainstay of school field trips for decades. Rather, museum educators have developed museum experiences that teach to NAEA's goals. The Philadelphia Museum of Art offers museum lessons such as "Perception Games" and "Learning about Looking" which focus on activities that encourage children to look and think as they respond to art. Lessons on "Looking at Sculpture" and "Painters and Paintings" explore the choices artists make and the materials they use. The Museum also offers sequential lessons (four 1-1/2 hour visits) such as "Museum Journey: An Introduction to Art Appreciation" in which students focus on art visual perception, art and emotional response, art as history, and making judgments about the art of today.

The Denver Art Museum gives in- depth tours on Native American clothing, masks and ceremony in tribal Africa, and art and life in Colonial America. These tours use gallery work sheets and Artcarts with touchable objects. They stress relating art to the historical and cultural context of the people who created it. "Reactions, Memories, and Dreams" is a gallery experience offered by the Museum that stresses personal reactions to works of art which may be affective, cognitive, associative, or imaginative. The experience employs improvisational activities, study sheets, storytelling, and poetry writing as learning strategies. In 1986 the National Endowment for the Humanities

awarded more than $54,000 to the Denver Art Museum to develop a model to teach students ages 10 to 15 the methods of art history, criticism, and aesthetics. The six-week summer program involves 200 Denver-area youth in studying art objects in their cultural context by making linkages with religion, literature, anthropology, and history. The project, titled "Piecing Together the Past," provides for a dissemination plan and a related youth activity book.

The Toledo Museum of Art offers tours which focus on how color, shape, and line work together as visual language; explore the third dimension in sculpture, furniture, glass, and pottery; and examine how artists create the illusion of depth on a two- dimensional surface. For young adults at Toledo "A Century of 'Isms' "

explores art from neoclassicism to fauvism. "Voices of Today" combines jazz, theatre, cinema, and electronic media to show the relationship between the sights and sounds of today and contemporary art. The "20th Century Art and Values" tour at Toledo gives teens the opportunity to think and talk about the art and values of the modern age.

The Davenport Art Gallery's "Extra Effort" program involves about 60 outstanding high school students who meet each month at the gallery for programs on art history, aesthetics, studio techniques, and critique sessions. The program culminates in a juried art exhibition. "Art Enrichment" is a multiple museum visit program developed by the Huntington Art Gallery of the University of Texas, Austin. It involves elementary students in structured, sequential preparation lessons, museum visits, and follow-up lessons which integrate art history, criticism, aesthetics, and studio production. In Atlanta, the High Museum's five-part "Discovery" program for fourth graders utilizes dance, music, gallery games with the permanent collection, and studio projects to develop children's visual perception skills. The ART express program at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute aims at fostering children's skills in visual perception, self-expression, critical thinking, and imagination through a combination of in-school and in- museum workshops using AV media,

Art Education January 1987

storytelling, and studio projects with learning-to-look-visits to the Museum's permanent collection. Museums and the Disciplines of Art

All of the programs described above are multi-disciplinary, for museum educators recognize that learning art history involves more than memorization of names and dates. As Roskill (1976, p. 11) points out, "Works of art are part of the society from which they spring, and one cannot learn about one without learning about the other." Art history draws on a uumber of other disciplines, among them archaeology, anthropology, history, and sociology. It makes connections with literature, philosophy, and music. It must take into account science and mathematics in studying the technical structure, techniques, and materials/media of works of art. And it overlaps with criticism and aesthetics.

Aestheticians draw on the visual, performing, and literary arts in their writings, citing examples from music, dance, poetry, and painting to make or illustrate a point. Museum educators contribute to the aesthetic development of young people by utilizing a variety

Art Enrichment students study a Remington sculpture with docent in the C.R. Smith Collection of American Art in the Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin.

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of art forms to make the visual arts accessible to them. Using mimes, music, and movement, the aesthetic qualities of a sculpture or a painting can be illuminated by non-verbal means. Such experiences help students to better understand and feel works of art and promote what Dewey (1934) called funding - the fusion of meanings/association from past experience with the immediate perception of the work of art. Combining verbal and non-verbal responses to works of art, as museum educators help students to do, results in a multiplicity of perceptions which gather in not only relevant details of the piece but also its representational meanings and emotional content.

Since museum educators must meet the needs of English, foreign language, and social studies teachers, as well as elementary teachers, many museum programs are designed to correlate with disciplines other than art. But it is important to bear in mind that even in such tours or lessons, the art is still basic. It is the art object that is the focal point.

As in many districts across the nation, the Oklahoma City schools have no elementary art program. To fill this gap, the Oklahoma Museum of Art, with Junior League financial support, developed a seven-week art program based on the district's curriculum and designed to introduce art concepts and stimulate creativity while reinforcing basic reading and writing skills. Although emphasizing art history and criticism, materials and assistance in doing studio projects are provided to classroom teachers. The High Museum's multi-part "Partnerships" program utilizes special exhibitions to make linkages with language arts, math, science, and social studies. The Saint Louis Museum of Art's "Arts in the Basic Curriculum" is a sequence of six museum visits that relate art to the school curriculum in language arts and social studies. In a day-long workshop, museum educators and classroom teachers coordinate the museum lessons with classroom content. Photography, paper-making, and silk- screening are the focus of an art and the basic skills program offered by the

Gibbs Art Gallery in South Carolina. In 1985 the Virginia Museum of Art in collaboration with the Science Museum of Virginia organized a new Artmobile exhibition called Reflections, which travels statewide. The exhibition examines the scientific properties of reflection and their exploration by artists from the Renaissance to the present. An excellent teacher's guide was developed to accompany the exhibition. The Worchester Art Museum's art and basic skills program uses objects in the collections and studio projects to teach principles of balance, ratio, and proportion; geometry in art; patterns in nature; and the mathematics of architecture. Those who decry art in the service of "basics" would do well to study Islamic and Italian Renaissance art, both of which have a firm foundation in mathematics and science.

Museum educators, art teachers, and interested parents should build on this marriage of art and the basics by

demonstrating that in a disciplined- based approach, art has a body of knowledge and skills not only worthy of being taught in their own right, but a content that both complements and reinforces the traditional core of the curriculum. That museum educators feel more comfortable than do art teachers in relating art to other subject areas may in part be attributable to the fact that most art museum educators have been trained as art historians or humanists (Zeller, 1985), while most art teachers come out of a studio background. Though the ultimate responsibility for providing art teachers with knowledge and skills in art history, criticism, and aesthetics rests with higher education, and will be achieved only through a major reform of preservice training programs, museum educators are making a contribution to inservice training designed to help teachers take the integrated approach called for in the NAEA's goals.

Students exploring form, space, and texture in the High Museum's Sensations gallery.

52 Art Education January 1987



Museums and Professional Development Museums are actively involved in providing opportunities for professional development. From after school or weekend workshops and short courses to conferences and courses carrying college credit, museums are in the business of continuing education for teachers. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts sponsors an annual inservice for Salt Lake City teachers. The four part course includes: "looking and talking about art (criticism), the purpose of art (art history), your five-sense worth (aesthetics), and materials of art (media and classroom production)." The Museum also produced as part of the inservice a packet titled "Learning to Talk About Art: A Guide to Art Criticism." The Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosts a monthly series of "Evenings for Educators" which include docent-led tours, an art history lecture, films, artist workshops, and a packet of resource material. Over the last three years the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has organized conferences on African art, China, and "India in the Classroom and the Museum." These interdisciplinary conferences explored the cultures in which the objects exhibited in the Museum were created. In the fall of 1986 the Nelson- Atkins hosted a symposium on discipline-based art education. Earlier in 1986 the High Museum in Atlanta was the site for a conference on teacher training, adult museum visitors, and computer applications in museum and school art programs. The High Museum also offers workshops for PTA members and other adults who work with youth. These workshops explore learning about art through dialogue and inquiry methods, gallery games, participatory activities, and curriculum tie-ins. Last year four Missouri museums cosponsored a conference on "Aesthetic Education: Talking About Art" held at the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the University of Missouri, Columbia. Museums and Schools: Partners in Teaching, an NAEA publication, by Theodore Katz documents the model teacher training program conducted at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All or part of this exemplary institute has been replicated in other states.

There are few museums that are not

involved in some form of teacher training. Information about such programs can be found in most museums' school services brochure. Museum Instructional Resources From slide packages and laminated reproductions to films and videos to trunks of touchables, most museums have materials available to teachers to extend the field trip experience. Such materials range from background information on artists and works of art with suggested activities and bibliography xeroxed and stapled together, to elaborately bound and handsomely illustrated booklets, some complete with slides or color reproductions. Limited space permits mentioning only a few of the most exemplary of these resource packages.

In terms of meeting teachers' needs, the most useful are those materials with a sequential lesson plan format. The Saint Louis Art Museum Handbook of Lesson Plans II consists of forty lessons each organized by idea, lesson (background), activity, and visual resources. A series of resource portfolios for secondary teachers is available from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. These consist of a packet of 8-1/2 x 11 inch color reproductions with lessons about each work on the back. Each lesson in the painting portfolio, for example, has information on the artist, the subject, composition, use of color, use of light, materials used, technique, related art activities, and suggested readings. The Tampa Museum's teacher's activity guide for The Artist and the Quilt exhibition comes with slides and lesson plans organized by grade level and correlated with other areas of the curriculum. The Language of Art, produced by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, is a book of studio activities designed as follow-ups to museum visits. Following an introductory section, "The Framework for Aesthetic Education," the book consists of a number of well-written lesson plans, divided into lower and

upper elementary levels, on line, color, and texture. Included are vocabulary lists, motivational tips, pre-museum visit suggestions, and a resource guide.

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee has produced two bound booklets of lesson plans with accompanying slides as part of its "Arts and the Basic Curriculum" program. The lessons, which integrate art into the student's daily learning, are keyed to objects in travelling exhibitions and in the Museum's permanent collections, and focus on art history, techniques used by artists, and enriching art-making activities.

The Springfield Museum of Art in conjunction with the Springfield (Missouri) Public Schools produces video tapes of current exhibitions geared to an elementary school audience. These videos incorporate basic art concepts and vocabulary to reinforce and extend the art curriculum in the local schools.

By providing teachers with visuals and printed art-historical information on the objects in their collections, museum educators give teachers the resource materials needed to integrate art history, criticism, and aesthetics into their classroom art program. But teachers should view these resources as supplemental to utilization of the original works of art in the museum. Postcards, posters, and slides should not be a substitute for the direct confrontation with the works of art by students. Museum Learning vs. Schooling Museums are unique educational environments in which learning is largely informal, non-sequential, and usually involves a high degree of social interaction on the part of visitors. Museum learning is frequently intergenerational and geared to enlightened recreation rather than the accumulation of large amounts of information. Museum educators, in working with and observing large numbers of non-school visitors of all ages, interest levels, and backgrounds, recognize that people learn in museums in a variety of ways; therefore, they utilize mimes, storytellers, musicians, dancers, actors, AV productions, gallery brochures, self-guided activities, and interactive exhibit devices to meet visitors' needs and interests. School art programs should prepare students for the type of informal life-

Art Education January 1987 53



long learning opportunities found in museums by utilizing the museum educator's expertise in fostering what has become known as "museum literacy" (Stapp, 1984). The goals of quality art education should include becoming acquainted with and valuing the community's and the nation's rich cultural resources and knowing how to utilize them.

Recognizing the need to make works of art accessible to children during non-school visits, museum educators have developed a wealth of printed materials designed to be used by children or by children and adults together. Like teacher resource materials, these gallery games, self- guided brochures, and young people's catalogues run the gamut from mimeographed sheets to bound books with four-color reproduction. Once again, constraints of space limits discussion to a few exemplars. The Great Picture Hunt produced by the National Gallery of Art is intended as an introduction to the collection. Taking an inquiry approach, it stresses careful looking and invites individual response to works of art that elicit critical judgments. Visual perception is the focus of the North Carolina Museum of Art's Learn to Look Book, which, like the Worcester Art Museum's activity booklets for young people, takes a treasure hunt approach to structuring children's learning in the museum. Using a similar spot-the- detail format, Making Friends at the Mint Museum, includes art-historical information and questions that deal with basic art criticism and aesthetics.

Small World: A Guide to Works of Art for and About Children, produced by the Saint Louis Art Museum, is a collection of a dozen unbound color reproductions with art-historical information on each piece, an activity, vocabulary, and child's bibliography.

Some museums have begun to produce exhibition catalogues specifically for children. The Huntington Art Gallery of the University of Texas, Austin, has taken the lead in this form of interpretation. Typically, its young people's catalogues combine information and questions about works of art, activity sections, and a glossary of art terms. The Amon Carter Museum's youth catalog The Life and Times of Charles M. Russell contains information on the

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artist and his work interspersed with questions and activities that require the reader to study and react to selected objects in the exhibition.

These self-guided materials help the child to explore and discover the world of art from his/her perspective. They build confidence in the child who is trying to make sense of this big, strange, and perhaps frightening place - the museum. They promote dialogue or discussion about art between the child and the accompanying adults or other children. They teach the child the skills of museum literacy. By holding the child in front of the work of art and focusing/guiding his/her looking through questions not only are the rudiments of aesthetic scanning being gently taught, but the child is also being guided through those multiple perceptions necessary for what Pepper (1955, p. 19) calls "an integral perception" of the work of art.

In recent years museum educators have given increased attention to intergenerational learning in museums. Gallery guides or games developed for children and adults to use together are one form of intergenerational learning. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Doing Art Together" is a studio- based program which involves adults and young people in art production in a variety of media. The two-part workshops held at the Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University are called "Eye Openers" and combine a behind-the-scenes tour, activities, and discussion on how museums function with an in-depth look at works of art using improvisational, inquiry, and other strategies to develop knowledge and skills in art history, aesthetics, and making critical judgments. The Polk Museum of Art in Florida gives day-long family workshops that combine gallery tours, short films, and hands-on activities related to current exhibitions. Shorter intergenerational participatory programs are the gallery-centered "Family Workshops" at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, and the Toledo Museum of Art's "Share-a-Sunday: Adult Child Workshops."

A few art museums, perhaps taking a page from the programming found in science centers and natural history museums, have designed interactive

Art Education January 1987

exhibition spaces that involve adults and children learning directly about art through participatory exhibition units. The Gateway Gallery at the Dallas Museum of Art juxtaposes interactive devices, through which visitors can experience the elements of art, with original works of art that illustrate how artists have used the elements and principles in their art. A gallery guide book for children adds to the learning experience, as does a resource center containing books and art activities. The High Museum's Sensations is a participatory exhibition that combines art and science to demonstrate how our senses work and how visual artists and musicians use the senses and sensory perception to communicate. On another level the exhibition explores the relationship between the arts and technology. In Alabama, the Montgomery Museum of Art will open a children's hands-on gallery in 1987. How to Make Museums Basic to the Art Program The wealth of knowledge, experience, and skills possessed by museum educators should be utilized in developing the type of art program called for in NAEA's goals. Art educators should begin to map out ways of making museums an integral part of the school art curriculum. The following suggestions for action involve all of NAEA's divisions in promoting museum learning experiences as basic to all K-12 art programs.

*Survey the availability of museums, college art department galleries, and commercial galleries within a 50-75 mile radius of your community. Do not forget historical museums, community art centers, and natural history museums. *Assess the current utilization of museums, college art department galleries, commercial galleries, and performing arts institutions in your community by teachers in your district. *Identify museums, college galleries, or commercial art galleries which might sponsor workshops for teachers and/or visits by school groups. *Identify museum educators who could serve as speakers at district inservices or as curriculum con- sultants. *Survey the permanent collections at area museums and identify those



works of art which can be used in specific units or lessons in your art curriculum. *Plan a reception at the museum for school board, PTA/PTO groups, and school administrators and demonstrate through participatory activities how the museum's works of art are integral to the teaching of art, language arts, and social studies. Plan this jointly with museum educators. *Approach your local museum to sponsor an exhibit of student art for Youth Art Month. *Work with museums to approach state legislatures to subsidize buses for school field trips through the state education department. *State education department offi- cials should draw images primar- ily from state/regional museums for use in their art curricula. Use works of art students may get to see during their schooling. *Most museums are open at least one night a week, often free of charge. Arrange with the museum for a parents and children night at the museum with activities and re- freshments. Have activities families can do together and a group presentation or demonstration of a technique using a work or works in the collections. *Commit space in each issue of the state newsletter to describe current or upcoming museum exhibitions or school-related museum services. *Encourage museum educators to organize educators advisory com- mittees that meet once a month to discuss and plan closer museum- school relations. *Ask museum educators to testify at school board meetings on the need for providing funding for field trip buses so that schools can utilize community cultural resources. *Try to schedule the meeting of high school advanced placement art history or humanities classes in the museum itself. *Plan multiple, sequential museum visits. *Plan an after school, in-school, reception for museum educators and docents to meet teachers and curriculum specialists so that museum educators can become familiar with the realities of the classroom.

Docent Bob Jones guides Art Enrichment students in looking at a Peter Saul painting at the Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin.

*Higher education should develop courses dealing with the utilization of museums as learning environments and resources for teaching art. These should be either team taught or taught by museum educators on adjunct appointments. *Involve preservice teacher trainees early in museums by providing experiences in a practicum or field experience/observation before student teaching begins. *State departments of education should amend student teaching re- quirements to provide for a portion of student teachers' time to be spent in a structured museum internship linked with their school assignment. *Have a local business adopt a museum-school partnership by funding joint projects. *Look to the Junior League and other civic organizations as poss- ible sources of funding for museum- school projects. *Work with the state department of education to develop a model for museum education experiences that can be used by school districts in writing curriculum.

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*Approach art museum educators to serve on school curriculum- writing teams. Write the museum into the curriculum. *Develop a list of known resources/ financial backing for museum-school visits/programs. *Museum educators should attend PTA/PTO meetings to tell parents of the value of museum education. *Museums, higher education, and school districts should cosponsor summer institutes in museums on integrating art history, aesthetics, criticism, and studio production. I-

Terry Zeller is an Associate Professor ofArt at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb.

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Art Education January 1987 55

References A Nation At Risk. (1983). Washington, D.C.:

U.S. Government Printing Office. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New

York: Minton, Balch & Company. Pepper, S. (1955). The work of art. Blooming-

ton: Indiana University Press. Roskill, M. (1976). What is art history? New

York: Harper & Row, Publishers. Stapp, C. (1984). Defining museum literacy.

Roundtable Reports, 9 (1), 3-4. Zeller, T. (1985). Art museum educators: Who

are they? Museum News, 63 (5), 53-59.



museums and the goals of art education

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