Integrating Student Workers Into Museum Practice

Launched in January 2016 at a university art museum on a large campus, the Museum Engagement Student Worker position aims to reimagine the student work-study role. Conceptualized as a role where students can experience and contribute to the museum's internal culture, the program integrates students into the museum's internal fabric and empowers them to act as engagement agents for community members. Museum Engagement Student Workers function as front-of-house staff, provide all public tours, and assist with public programming. This narrative, written from the author's perspective as the manager of the student worker role, examines the successes and challenges of the Museum Engagement Student Worker program using tenets of the museum's strategic plan (innovation, accessibility, engagement, community, sustainability) as points of reference.

Thoughts and Highlights Involving an Urban Museum Education Partnership and a University

This chapter examines the partnership between an urban art museum and a university. It involves museum educators, art education faculty, and undergraduate students. It specifically explores the development of hands-on museum activities for elementary students created by the university participants. The chapter is written from a higher education perspective. It provides a description of all facets of the partnership from its planning to the completion of the museum activities. The partnership provided the university students authentic museum experiences and ways to make professional connections with museum professionals. Recommendations for those who wish to develop university/museum partnerships are shared.

Building a Racial Identity

This chapter examines African American college students' learning experiences at the Florence County Museum. Looking at several works of art, how do African American students construct their learning experiences in a course-required tour? What personal meanings do they take away from the experience? African American students are voluntarily engaged or only occupied in the works that are related to or connected to their racial roots. They also interpret the works of art from their racial points of view. Therefore, their racial identity as an African American is a key part of understanding their learning experience from the museum. It is important for African Americans not only to see themselves in museum exhibitions but also be able to develop their racial identity and imagine their future through art. It creates equal opportunities for all students from different social, racial, and cultural groups to function effectively in a diverse demographic society.

Docents and Museum Education

Many art museums rely upon volunteers, often titled docents, to implement a range of educational offerings, including guided gallery experiences. As such, docents regularly engage visitors more than most museum staff members. A review of literature spanning over a century provides support for an examination of four reoccurring themes within museum education and docent history: uncertain definitions, professionalization, theoretical foundation, and embedded traditions. Subsequently, consideration of the past offers context for examining contemporary museum education programs that develop the capacity of docents as change agents, including offerings during the COVID-19 pandemic and developing inclusive practice through docent education. The chapter concludes with an envisioning of the future for docents within museum education.

Decorating Up a Few Acres of the Rocky Mountains

In this chapter, the authors explore the development of a partnership between undergraduate art history students at an art and design college and educators at a historic house museum in Denver, CO. From this partnership, the museum team created authentic opportunities for student voice in three different art history survey courses. In these classes, students engaged in practical applications of art historical research and created original objects of art, while the college provided resources and audience to support museum programming and development. Here, the authors discuss how these projects developed into a lasting and mutually beneficial partnership for continued socially engaged art history and design opportunities for students.

Beyond Inclusion

Access and inclusion have become “hot topics” in many fields in the last decade, including museum education. While this interest has shed light on the need to improve access to the museum for a number of marginalized groups, people with disabilities still remain largely left out of the conversation. Many museums and their staff continue to struggle to make art museums accessible for this group. This chapter serves as a practical “how-to” for both prospective and current museum educators. This chapter proposes that museums move beyond inclusion, towards a radical form of accessibility that troubles the “check-list” nature of traditional access, values the voices and experiences of people with disabilities, and utilizes principles of universal design.

Stay Gold

This chapter focuses on the experiences of participants in an intergenerational art program for LGBTQIA+ audiences, which takes place at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson (MOCA). In this chapter, the authors outline the impetus and purpose of this program. They consider the impact that it has had on LGBTQIA+ individuals and the formation of an intergenerational community. From combating loneliness to creating connections across generations, this program invites individuals into the museum space who identify as LBTQIA+ but rarely have the opportunity to connect with one another. Facilitators and participants design projects and gallery activities that promote engagement through dialogue and art-making. As such, art provides connections that give participants opportunities to share and learn from one another. Contemporary art and the museum become sites for engagement. Gallery activities and art-making allow participants to experiment with a range of materials and learn new skills through humor, play, creative inquiry, and collaboration.

The 50 Year Reunion

By 2035, the aging population will be larger than that of people 18 and younger. More than ever, art museums must consider how to best serve this audience. Research on the development of aging adults highlights that creative aging programming provides a beneficial impact on the lives of older adults while helping to combat ageism and redefine how older adults are seen in cultural institutions. This chapter reviews the similarities and differences between the programming for adults 55 and older at the Tucson Museum of Art, a mid-size regional institution, and The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, a rural, contemporary arts center. Through an analysis of the two institutions' programs for older adults, the authors discuss how older adults can fulfill the roles of visitor, participant, and learner when presented with equitable and intentional opportunities.

Socially Responsive Museum Pedagogy

Art museums in the United States have long been called upon to provide educational and engaging experiences for their visitors; more recently, this expectation has expanded to address the most salient needs of local communities and respond to issues of social inequality. At The Ohio State University's Wexner Center for the Arts, these collaborations are woven into the mission of the institution and serve as a foundation of its educational framework. In this chapter, the authors highlight specific community collaborations between the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy at Ohio State, and the Columbus, Ohio, community. They suggest that these programs not only individually serve as examples for other institutions and university students engaged in museum education scholarship, but also collectively form a socially responsive museum pedagogy enacted in an ongoing cycle of collaborative inquiry.

Engaging Refugee Audiences Through Process and Performance in Multivocal, Community-Based Programs

This chapter explores multivocality, when working with refugees, as an approach to challenge and destabilize homogenizing narratives. Museum as Sanctuary is a long-term program at the Tucson Museum of Art that leverages community partnerships to engage refugee audiences through art-making and in-gallery activities. The author will explore how museums can foster multivocal, community-based programs by creating opportunities for participants to share their opinions, observations, and experiences in response to works of art on view and through their own artistic products. The theories of Trinh T. Minh-ha provide a lens for contextualizing the multivocality that emerges from collaborations and that honors difference, builds comfort, supports individual strengths, and welcomes change. Through a methodological blending of critical narrative inquiry and decolonizing theories, the author examines pedagogical strategies that include performance and process in order to unsettle monolithic ideas to make space for multiplicities.