Arts + Museum Education

[museum-education]

The Value of Museums

Museums are more than a collection of objects. Museums are more than a resource for a community. Museums are more than a place for solitude, for study, for socialising, for gathering, a place to learn, a place to find inspiration, a place to find joy. Museums are more than one thing to everyone who visits them.

In light of the proposal to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities I would like to request submissions to feature on this blog of all the things that your museum, art gallery or archive has done to bring value to your communities. Have you worked on a project for your visitors? Have you conducted research to explore something new in your field? 

Please email me at arts.museum.education at gmail dot com to start the conversation. I can’t wait to begin featuring your stories.

[lamignonette]

[cwnerd12]

shit man this got me emotional

[mckitterick]

left: the Nebra sky disc, circa 1600 BCE, showing the Moon, Sun, and stars in gold on copper - the oldest depiction of the cosmos in the world

right: the Webb Space Telescope photo, July 2022, revealing thousands of baby galaxies forming in the early days of the universe - humankind’s deepest look into the sky

[museeeuuuum]

About a year ago now, I gave a talk as part of an emerging museums professionals panel. For the talk, we were given ten minutes to discuss our hopes for the future of the museum sector. My talk discussed the staff of these institutions and how I hope that they can thrive.

Staff are the lifeblood of the museum sector, but they are overworked and underpaid. I have converted my talk into a YouTube video, but decided to mix things up a bit: I invited 5 guests, museum professionals from Canada, the US, Finland, and the UK, to chat with me about their experiences in this sector.

Please watch this video and be sure to give the participants some love in the comment section!

[projectiondepartment]

from The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, by Dan Hicks.

[Image ID: The book has been written with this motto in mind: as the border is to the nation state so the museum is to empire. Like the border uses space to classify, making distinctions between different kinds of human, so the museum uses time. Like the telegraph, the camera and the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology themselves, the museum seeks to annihilate time and space, to weaponise distance. Like the camera, the museum does not freeze time but controls exposure, measures out duration. A time of taking is giving way to a time of returns, like the gun that shoots twice, a second moment is coming. From the outset, therefore, we need a theory of taking. /end ID]

[ilookattextile]

Horse rugs from the Textile Museum of Canada and the McCord Museum

[nevver]

The song remains the same, @ArtButSports

[jotx]

why did the official account for the mexican museum of modern art post this 😭😭😭

[brooklynmuseum]

After a two-year Arts as Social Justice school partnership, hear what educators took away from the Brooklyn Museum Education collaboration. Supported by the Kenan Foundation, our educators worked with students from two Brooklyn middle schools, MS 267 and JHS 218, to explore how art can be used in response to social and political issues⁠.⁠

[philamuseum]

Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” sparked a storm of controversy at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, held in New York City in 1913. The painting was perceived by art critics to be utterly unintelligible, and it soon became the butt of jokes, jingles, and caricatures. The “American Art News” (known today as ARTnews) offered a reward to the first reader who could “find the lady” within the jumble of jagged lines, and newspaper cartoonists had a field day ridiculing the painting with such titles as “Explosion in a Shingle Factory.“ When Duchamp learned of the scandal, he was delighted, and the widespread notoriety that the painting brought him encouraged the French artist to move to New York two years later. See the painting for yourself in the newly installed Duchamp Galleries.

 “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” 1912 by Marcel Duchamp 

[ret-uk]

Botany on Your Plate at The South London Botanical Institute

June 2017

I recently developed and led three afternoon workshops for adults with learning disabilities at the South London Botanical Institute as part of their current Botany on Your Plate series of workshops and events. As far as I am aware, the workshops are the first to be developed there specifically for people with learning disabilities. However, there is already a rich educational programme in place for children and adults.

Keep reading

[grupaok]

Installation view of Harlem on My Mind, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 1969. 

[auricaedus-deactivated20220129]

Vatican Museums , March 2017.

[virtual-artifacts]

I had a lunch in this hallway. Me, small PhD student among biggest minds of Egyptology, eating pasta, drinking prosecco and… feeling fulfilled. Good memory. 

[tr1964]

Toyota Municipal Museum of Art

[thestyleline]

One thing I wish someone told me is that we’re all kind of making it up as we go and the most important ingredient you need to start something impactful is to know why you are doing it. If you can answer why you’ve got what you need to make a start.

Shea Christner, Designer of Open Air Museum

(via thestyleline)

[museum-education]

I discovered that when students explore a topic they are truly passionate about, amazing things happen: engagement increases, attendance and work ethic improve, twenty-first-century skills are acquired, classroom energy and collaboration are fostered, and my assessment of student understanding becomes more clear and accurate.

How To Ease Students Into Independent Inquiry Projects | MindShift | KQED News

[digitalpubliclibraryofamerica]

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

Not to make you feel guilty about buying your card at the store, but check out the art of the hand-made and custom-designed Valentine’s Day card in DPLA! Here are a few and explore many more! 

Selected cards include:

A Valentine card c. 1800, from Free Library of Philadelphia via PA Digital

A laser-cut Valentine created by artist Marian Bantjes, from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

A chromolithographed paper valentine c. 1890 from Minnesota Historical Society via Minnesota Digital Library

A valentine created by John Baird in 1839, from Wilson County Archives via Digital Library of Tennessee