Rethinking the Museum Tour

Isamu Noguchi, Core (Cored Sculpture)

This month, I've been participating in a tour training program at the Noguchi Museum under the auspices of Rebecca Herz, head of education for the museum and formerly the senior education manager of Learning Through Art at the Guggenheim.

So far, the focus has been on conducting meaningful tours for adults, a challenging and thought-provoking endeavor. 

During our conversations the majority of the participants, including me, copped to the fact that we generally avoid museum tours when we visit our peer institutions.  Most of us, as artists and art historians familiar with the process of critical analysis, prefer not to be spoon-fed the information that stereotypically constitutes such an encounter.  Our collective goal in the training, therefore, was to explore what a tour informed by current best practices would look like.  In a nutshell, the aim is an open-ended discussion in which the tour guide serves more as a fellow learner and conduit for visitor experiences than as a teacher.

To this end, we've observed tours by expert educators Georgia Krantz at the Guggenheim and Rika Burnham at the Frick Collection, as well as reading articles on the subject by leading voices in the field, including Burnham, George Hein, and Cheryl Mezaros.  Today we had the opportunity to field-test some of our new techniques, albeit for an audience of fellow museum educators.

Personally, I found it tough to break out of "instruction mode," especially after working with children for so long, but I'm confident that practicing these techniques will be worthwhile.

The Magic of Art

Paul Signac, Portrait of Felix Feneon

It's easy to forget, after years as a practicing artist, how exciting it was to try out new materials and techniques for the first time.  Luckily, I have my residency as an artist assistant for Learning Through Art to remind me.

We're two weeks into the classroom sessions now, and the experience has been incredibly rewarding.  Both times we've entered the room, our three third-grade classes have given us a reception that this age bracket usually reserves for Santa Claus: gasps, cheering, and applause.

The energy level in the room gets even higher when the lesson starts.  Our students are avid aficionados of Picasso and Matisse, and never tire of telling us that they want to be artists when they grow up (we tell them, "you're artists now!").  During the demonstration yesterday, after first seeing the broad strokes they could make with the side of a vine charcoal stick and then seeing how easily the strokes could be wiped away, our classes reacted as if we'd produced the drawings from thin air. 

Witnessing moments like that, who could doubt that the arts are a fundamental part of our schools?

Your Brain on Art

I'm very excited this year to have the privilege of participating in the Guggenheim's Learning Through Art program as an artist assistant.

For the last 40 years, LTA has been integrating visual arts into the academic curriculum at art-starved elementary schools throughout the five boroughs.  The program is even more remarkable when you consider the caliber of artists who have participated in the past, including Robert Rauschenberg, Paloma Picasso, and Keith Haring.  

Earlier this week, I attended a professional development workshop for LTA at the Guggenheim that featured a talk by Laurel Schmidt, educator, author, and advocate for arts instruction in the school system.  She was an engaging speaker, discussing the importance of art and inquiry in the classroom through the lens of recent neurological research that suggests that our brains achieve satisfaction through the release of dopamine, triggered by novel experiences, and cortisol, triggered by challenges.  She makes a compelling argument for moving away from the barren, test-laden approach favored by No Child Left Behind, towards an arts-rich model that encourages students to think.

As a fellow educator, I applaud Ms. Schmidt's approach and sincerely hope that administrators heed her advice.