Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience

At the heart of all good art museum teaching is an effort to bring people and artworks together in meaningful ways. But what constitutes an experience of a work of art? What should be taught and why? What kinds of uniquely valuable experiences are museum educators alone equipped to provide? This book—unlike any other publication currently available—addresses these and myriad other questions and investigates the mission, history, theory, practice, and future prospects of museum education. Every critical issue that has preoccupied the profession throughout its hundred-year history is considered, including lecture- versus conversation-based formats; the place of information in gallery teaching; the relation of art museum teaching to the disciplines of art history, curation, and conservation; the use of questions to stimulate discussion; and the role of playfulness, self-awareness, and institutional context in constructing the visitor’s experience.

The book will prove invaluable for all professional museum educators and volunteer docents as well as museum studies students, art and art history teachers, curators, and museum administrators. The essays distill the authors’ decades of experience as practitioners and observers of gallery teaching across the United States and abroad. They offer a range of perspectives on which everyone involved with art museum education may reflect and in so doing, encourage education to take its proper place at the center of the twenty-first century art museum.

• Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines
• Museums in Motion, 3rd Edition (American Association for State and Local History)
• The Annotated Mona Lisa, Third Edition: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to the Present (Volume 3) (Annotated Series)
• Interpretation
• The Museum Educator's Manual: Educators Share Successful Techniques (American Association for State and Local History)
• Museum Gallery Activities: A Handbook (American Alliance of Museums)
• Art Museum Education: Facilitating Gallery Experiences
• The Museum Experience: The Discovery of Meaning
• From Periphery To Center: Art Museum Education in the 21st Century
• Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums