Museum Education Division

A recent article from Edutopia shares how a place-based education experiment – part of a school district turnaround strategy – enables students to attend a school doubling as a museum. The Grand Rapids Public Museum School, launched through the 2016 XQ: The Super Schools Project, seeks to enhance learning opportunities, while also increasing museum visitation.

The Teaching Residency program at Fallingwater is for K-12 Teachers and Museum Education Professionals. The week-long program offers teachers an opportunity to develop programs that integrate STEAM learning with architectural and design methods. We have a few spots open for the July 8-15 session. The price is $1,000 and includes meals, housing, and all materials. Scholarships are available.

This is a two-year fellowship with the possibility of renewal for a third year. The fellowship provides curatorial training and supports scholarly research related to the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The fellow is fully integrated into a specific curatorial department with duties, privileges, and status equivalent to those of an assistant curator. Time is divided between specific projects and general curatorial work within the department, including research on the collection and new acquisitions, work on the presentation of the collection, participation in aspects of special exhibition projects, and opportunities to give public lectures. The fellow will plan and complete a project in consultation with the supervising curator.

With tax reform discussions emerging in Congress, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Thursday - National Museum Day -- introduced legislation to encourage donations of museum-quality contemporary art.

Museum Education Division Report - NAEA News - April/May 2017

In January 1990, when Kathleen Schneider and her staff sent out an international call for children’s art for a fledgling museum, they hadn’t even secured an exhibition space yet. They did have a P.O. box, an office in the form of Schneider’s Greenwich Village apartment, and a name—the Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA).

Now celebrating its 39th year, the annual Museum Mile Festival takes place on Tuesday, June 13, 2017, from 6 - 9 pm. Over 1.5 million people have taken part in this annual celebration since its inception. Festival attendees can walk the Mile on Fifth Avenue between 82nd Street and 105th Street while visiting seven of New York City’s finest cultural institutions, which are open free to the public throughout the evening.

This is an easy one: Scientists have determined that the exact amount of time one should look at a work of art in order to understand it is four minutes and eight seconds. Just kidding. Like almost every question asked in this series, the answer is highly subjective and dependent on the work of art, as well as how well-versed one is in parsing visual images.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Reinvestment Fund released a new report that provides insights for libraries and museums to connect with their communities in new and deeper ways. Produced as part of the Community Catalyst Initiative, the 59-page report combines findings from literature and input from library, museum and community leaders to further efforts of museums and libraries to become critical sites that support community well-being.