Tag Archives: art education

Field Notes

COVID-19 Has Taken a Toll on Museum Education

January 14, 2021 Mike Murawski 6 Comments

Written by Juline Chevalier

I keep thinking of the start of this post like the set-up for an uninspired stand-up comedy routine.

Me: Wow, it’s been a bad year for museum education!

Audience in unison: How bad is it?

Me: We did a survey to find out … let me tell you about it.

Not much of a punchline, I know.

We all know it’s been bad, and I am so sick of the use of phrases like “unprecedented” and “difficult year for everyone.” Because it hasn’t been equally difficult for everyone in the museum field.

This snapshot of findings from a survey by AAM and Wilkening Consulting showed that the staff positions most affected by layoffs and furloughs due to COVID19 were Guest Services/Admissions/Front of House/Retail (68%) and Education (40%).

So, how bad is it?

In the spring of 2020, Stephanie Downey and Amanda Krantz from arts and culture evaluation firm RK&A reached out to me in my role as Director of the Museum Education Division of the National Art Education Association (NAEA). They offered their services pro bono to document the impact of COVID19 on the museum education field. Stephanie and Amanda worked with the Museum Education Division on the Impact Study of Facilitated Single-Visit Art Museum Programs on Students Grades 4–6 and are truly committed to the field. Stephanie has written on this blog reflecting on the impact of COVID19 on museum relationships with K-12 teachers, students, and programs. Amanda has similarly cautioned that reducing education staff in museums weakens connections to community.

Stephanie and Amanda helped us create a digital survey that we distributed via email, social media, and listservs. Responses were collected in from August to October 2020, with most of the responses collected in September. Amanda analyzed the results of the quantitative questions, and Gwendolyn Fernandez and I analyzed the responses to a few open-ended questions. Gwen is the Pacific Region Representative-Elect for the NAEA Museum Education Division.

We shared an overview of the results in a webinar that you can watch a recording of here.

Of the 330 people who answered a question about change in employment status from the end of 2019 to the time of the survey, 66% said their employment status did not change. 30% reported some kind of negative impact such as being furloughed, pay or hours being cut, or being laid off. Percentages can gloss over the human beings impacted by these huge changes in their lives. 30% of 330 is 99. So 99 people who responded to the survey had to deal with the stress of a global pandemic plus decreased income or job security.

41% of respondents said that there was a decrease in full-time, or full-time equivalent, employees in their education departments between the end of 2019 and fall 2020. 54% said there was no change. Of course, full-time employment in museum education can seem like a luxury to the many folks who work on a contract or hourly basis. 34% of respondents said that the contract/hourly workers at their institution had been completely cut (see chart below).

Education department budgets also took a hit. 22% of respondents said their department budgets were reduced by 37% or more. 24% of respondents said their budgets were reduced between 16 and 35%. See chart below.

Museums have generally not been asking volunteers and/or docents to perform the work of previously employed museum staff. 81% said that volunteers were not asked to do work that had previously been done by paid staff.

Of course, the work shifted to digital and online formats: 91% of respondents said that their work shifted to creating new digital resources, and 72% said they were modifying existing resources for a digital format (see chart below).

Of the 246 responses to the open-ended question “What are you most proud of when it comes to the work you have been doing during the pandemic?” the most responses (110) mentioned digital or virtual programs and resources.

The work is still getting done, just with fewer staff and less budget. For the staff that remain, being stressed and overwhelmed is a common feeling. Of the 245 responses to the open-ended question “What is the most pressing concern you face in regard to work right now?” 52 responses identified increased workload and 44 responses described stress.

Huge amounts of digital and virtual work is happening, but education staff have not been provided the tools they need to complete this work. One third of respondents (see chart below) said that they were using their own technology (laptop, etc.) to work from home. 29% said their museum provided some of the technology they needed, but not all.

Museum educators are an empathic bunch; the chart below shows they reported being very concerned about their own safety and the safety of other staff, volunteers, and visitors. In response to the open-ended question “What goals do you have for pivoting your work through the remainder of the year?” two of the top five types of responses were “internal support” and “self-care” which acknowledge this increased emotional labor.

The category of “internal support” centered on retaining and supporting staff, leading with care, collaborating and communicating well, advocating for the education department, and creating sustainable cultures of productivity. The category of “self-care” is characterized by work/life balance, drawing boundaries, protecting against burnout, and managing expectations. Burnout is a concern for many museum educators in “normal” circumstances, but COVID19 has created a perfect storm of larger workload, decreased resources, and additional stress.

I am especially concerned that when in-person visits are common again that museum education staff will be expected to continue with the extraordinary digital offerings that they’ve developed and bring in-person tours and programs back to pre-COVID19 levels.

How is half the staff supposed to do twice the work? I implore you to start managing expectations of your department and museum leadership now. Consider what your priorities are and ask leadership what theirs are. Create a plan of action that takes into full account the resources you have. You might even compare what would have been possible with the staffing you used to have compared to what you have now.

I will end with the encouragement and reminder to focus on self-care and your mental and emotional well-being. We cannot expect things to go “back to normal,” nor should we want that.

If you are able to join us for the NAEA Museum Education Virtual Preconference on Feb. 23 and Feb. 25, 2021, you can explore the theme of Centering Care in Art Museum Education. Registration for the preconference is $49 for members and nonmembers.

We’re excited to welcome Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry as the keynote speaker. Tricia Hersey is an artist and activist. From the Nap Ministry website:

“Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.”

Inclusive Practices, Teens in Museums

Building Bridges to Museums: How Classroom Teachers Can Help Reach Marginalized Youth

April 22, 2014 Mike Murawski 12 Comments

By Clare Hagan, DeWitt Clinton High School

Students reflecting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

During most days here in New York (and especially the recent spring break), art museums are thronged with families. Parents, grandparents and their children of all ages orient themselves with maps, cruise galleries and favor an exhibit or two leaning in to read labels, manipulate interactives, ask questions and make observations together. They’ve come to be entertained, spend time together and invest in the value of informal education.

As most of us know, families build a foundation for behavior and learning strategies and research indicates that family museum visits lead to adults who find value and comfort in museums. So what happens when children are marginalized because they don’t visit museums with their families? How might they feel comfortable and find value in a museum? While museums turn to more inclusive programs, policies, and exhibits in order to reach more families, what can the individual classroom teacher do to help create lifelong museum visitors?

I am an English teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School, a large public high school in the Bronx. My school currently serves 2,745 students of which 76% receive free lunch and 21% are English Language Learners. Our total population is comprised of 62% Hispanic, 29% Black, 7% Asian, and 3% other. With the average museum visitor being white, college educated, and affluent, my students are certainly in the minority. On top of that, due to budget cuts and the growing focus on test scores, schools like ours are taking fewer and fewer field trips.

At the beginning of the year, 83% of my students claim to have never visited an art museum. Nevertheless, after their second field trip, 96% say they are “likely” or “very likely” to return to one. As I look at these results, I try to understand what makes this class work.

Exploring Museums as Cultural and Community Resources

During their senior year, students can elect to take my year-long Humanities class for English credit. As in most humanities classes, my students learn about a long line of classical texts and objects but in my class they also learn about critical issues related to the people and institutions that preserve, shape, and disseminate cultural knowledge. They analyze intentional learning communities from ancient libraries to contemporary museums to the internet through texts ranging from historical records to reviews of current exhibits. They ask:

Whose culture is being preserved and how is it represented?
Where are the silences and why might they persist?
What are the criteria for a good collection or exhibit?
How are informal learning spaces different from formal education? How are they the same?

Students embody their interpretations in the classroom.

In response, their mid-year project is to propose a museum exhibit on a subject of their choice and their year-end assignment is to design a public humanities project for their own community. Even if all my students don’t become museum curators and cultural events planners, at the very least they know that they can critically engage in public dialogue about cultural heritage, encounter deep experiences with works of art, and participate in self-directed learning in museums.

From day one, my students are engaged in object-based lessons. They read curatorial essays and look at several objects on a weekly basis, mostly from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By focusing on the Met as a primary resource, my students come to understand it deeply as a public institution. At the same time, they focus on works of art in depth. Based on my studies with educational philosopher Maxine Greene and through professional development at the Lincoln Center Institute, I have learned to infuse my classroom with aesthetic education practices.

A typical lesson in my classroom involves students in a combination of deep noticing, embodied experiences, play, analysis, discussion, art making, questioning, researching, making connections, and meta-cognitive reflection. Together we wonder about why art matters, why history matters, how both get made, and how both get preserved. In addition, my students learn how to approach an object. In the classroom, groups lean in to an image on an iPad or stand back and discuss an image projected on the wall. They look at the object first and annotate the label second. They learn to look together as well as individually, to listen for their curiosities, find comfort with ambiguity, and to follow through with informal research.

By late fall we are ready for our first self-guided tour and we visit the Met’s Greek Art galleries. It didn’t take long for me to learn that students need preparation for male nudity in theses galleries, so in the days prior to our visit we look closely at nudity and consider its role in ancient Greek culture. This way their field of vision goes beyond the nudity and they can see these objects from multiple perspectives. At the museum, students look at a few pre-selected objects making connections to our study of Homer’s The Odyssey. Next, they explore the galleries in pairs looking for patterns in order to draw conclusions about motifs. Finally, students are encouraged to explore independently and gravitate toward one object which they will eventually research and write about. After our trip, we reflect on our visit and share our research.

In the spring, we return to the Met for a second visit, this time to experience the Islamic Art galleries. My students are noticeably more comfortable during this visit and are able to take on an additional assignment. This assignment asks students to use photography to develop intimate engagement as well as critical distance. Each student is asked to submit four distinct shots: an architectural detail, a fleeting moment, a close up of an object (one they will also research), and a selfie. Upon returning to the classroom we view our collection of photographs, share our research, and reflect on the visit as seen through our own eyes.

Creating Deep Connections with Museums

When students visit museums, they gain experiences and build knowledge. As teachers and museum educators, we often activate schema before, during, or after experiencing a particular object or exhibit in order to make meaning. We do this to help students make connections. But the schema that experienced museum visitors activate is not only related to the content of objects and exhibits. It’s about what to expect from a museum visit and how to make the most of it. How to lean in and look deeply, how to explore independently and together, how to listen to and follow our curiosities. Even how to play or to take a critical stance.

When students don’t visit museums with their families they need classroom teachers to introduce them to the inroads of experiencing one. Otherwise they might never feel welcome or even inclined to try a visit. From my experience, curriculum and lessons based on aesthetic education practices that also familiarize students with museums as a resource need to happen through repetition over an extended period of time, spiraling throughout the course of a semester or a year. This is possible when teachers choose one museum to focus on using objects and text related to their collections. I also believe that teachers need to layer their curriculum with a range of critical questions and projects related to the sources of our cultural heritage. By becoming aware of the ways our cultural heritage is shaped and disseminated, students are empowered and see themselves as active participants in cultural dialogue.

Where else can we find success in reaching marginalized youth and what other roles can classroom teachers play? And finally, how can more teachers be persuaded to create deep connections with museums?

About the Author

CLARE HAGAN: Humanities teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, NY. At DeWitt Clinton, Clare has developed and implemented curriculum based on museums as a resource, museums as an object of study, aesthetic education and object-based lessons. She has presented her Humanities curriculum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has conducted professional development workshops on object-based lessons. In addition to her MA in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, she has studied critical issues in museum education at Teachers College and aesthetic education at Lincoln Center Institute. Currently, through generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is studying Islamic verse and will be publishing her museum infused curriculum online this summer. Clare’s postings on this site are her own and don’t necessarily represent DeWitt Clinton High School’s positions, strategies, or opinions.