Tag Archives: professional development

Field Notes, Spotlight on Practice

The Pushmi-Pullyu of Change in Museums

1 Comment

Reposted from Kiwi Loose in Museums, a project diary blog kept by Sarah Campbell as she embarked on her Churchill Fellowship to research the creative process of museum educators and innovative approaches to museum education. 

Written by Sarah Campbell

As a Churchill Fellow, I have a commitment to share my learning with peers. Since my research trip to the US last September, I’ve been looking for ways to do this and have gained a huge amount from contributing to London-based workshops for museum and gallery educators, organised by engage and GEM (Group for Education in Museums). I hosted the GEM workshop at the V&A a couple of weeks ago and was one of three facilitators. Working with GEM convenor, Laura Lewis-Davies, we decided to riff off the current exhibition, You Say You Want a Revolution? and discuss what kind of revolution we wanted to see in museum learning practice. The exhibition charts five years of radical change in Western society, culture and music, spanning the period 1966-1970.

It’s amazing how much can happen in such a short time frame, and this motivated us to think back on museum practice in 2016 and project to where we wanted to be in 2020. We peppered the whole workshop with ‘revolutionary’ touches: on arrival, participants were asked to fill out a name tag with both their own name and that of a revolutionary hero/heroine; throughout the event, we had large sheets of paper on the wall, surrounded by images of the exhibition, where participants could add post-its that summarised our current position, our ambitions for 2020, and how we’re going to get there; and at the end of the night, we filled out coloured protest banners, recycling an activity that had been devised for the Families programme in response to the exhibition. The name tags proved a popular ice-breaker and I took great pleasure in seeing Geri Halliwell chat with St Augustine. Laura arranged a follow-up Twitter event where we could all share more information on our choices – check out #gemrevhero.


At the workshop, we split the group in three and each moved from one facilitator to the next. Robert Fleming, Temple Study Centre Manager at the National Army Museum, spoke about the transformation of their museum – due for completion Spring 2017 – and their new interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to learning practice; Jo-Anne Sunderland Bowe, Project Co-ordinator at Heritec, shared her work with The Creative Museum project, which is prototyping new forms of collaboration; and I talked about some of my headline learning from the Churchill trip. This meant we each did the same session three times and unfortunately missed out on seeing the others in action, but it was a great chance to get feedback from the participants. In the spirit of revolution and change, I wanted to explore how the Fellowship has challenged some of my fundamental views on museum learning, I’ve been experiencing an interesting tension between the well-established perceived wisdom of standard museum learning practice, and new approaches that are pushing against this and leading to alternatives.

When planning the workshop, I was discussing these tensions with Laura and thinking about how to engage GEM participants with the subject. I compared these opposing forces to a Pushmi-Pullyu, the mythical, two-headed llama-esque companion of Doctor Dolittle, the equally mythical children’s book character who could talk to animals. The image of a Pushmi-Pullyu randomly popped into my head, and it was a bit of a throwaway comment. However, it ended up being a great way to introduce these ideas and became the basis for my session. I wanted people to have their own views first before I introduced my findings, and hoped to elicit a conversation where people could take different positions on the same topic. To do this, I created ‘The Pushmi-Pullyu of Change’, whereby Pushmi and Pullyu each took a different stance (represented by a speech bubble above their heads on a sheet of A3), and participants were asked to place a small playing counter somewhere along the spectrum in between the two to represent their views. From there, we could discuss the different rationales. It was a quick way to launch into meaty topics and everyone gamely played along and had plenty to contribute.There were three ‘Pushmi-Pullyus of Change’ offering the following pairs of opinions:

  • Learning programmes should be inspired by the collections and exhibitions / Learning programmes in museums can be about anything
  • Museums must engage with and present political issues / Museums must take a neutral stance on political issues
  • Our programmes should be educational first, entertaining second / Our programmes should be entertaining first, educational second

My only regret is that my questions weren’t quite fine-tuned enough. With more time and thought, I could have offered more nuanced phrasing and been more specific, especially around the claim that museums should be ‘neutral’ – I’m well aware museums are anything BUT neutral, but the provocation was meant to be about whether we should be hosting and/or debating issues such as Brexit. The third pairing was stolen directly from my conversation with Ethan Angelica at Museum Hack; he puts these statements to museum learning staff and insists they choose which one they support. To replicate this hard-line approach, I created a ‘no man’s land’ in the middle of the spectrum so that people couldn’t perch in the middle. The activity did generate some gentle debate, although I suspect our similarities outweigh our differences in many respects. I particularly liked how people spoke about using entertainment as a form of ‘stealth education’ – sneak in the learning when people are distracted and enjoying themselves.

While it has its faults, I’m quite chuffed with how my Pushmi-Pullyus worked out. They’ve peaked my interest in ‘gamifying’ discussions (it’s a word, I promise, in fact ‘the gamification of learning’ is a whole thing). It’s commonplace to use postcards as a means of prompting conversation, but I like the idea of being able to represent one’s point-of-view visually and symbolically through a quick game before then explaining further. If you would like to share other examples of games that you use as part of discussions, I’d love to hear from you.

I also enjoyed exploring the combination of the metaphorical and the literal. As regular readers may have noticed, I’m a sucker for similes and metaphors. What makes me even happier is when some aspect of the metaphor is taken literally and folded back into the original idea. I could have just asked people their opinions on the questions above, but to put them along the back of a Pushmi-Pullyu takes it to a different headspace. I picked up this trick from the wonderful artist, Sarah Cole. During her residency at Kettle’s Yard a few years ago, she asked the staff where they felt they were ‘walking on eggshells’ and then positioned short trails of broken shell at these locations around the building. The then Director, Michael Harrison, spent a couple of days having to step over one of these trails every time he went into or came out of his office – like all good directors, he took it with good humour and grace.

About the Author

SARAH CAMPBELL is Head of Learning Programmes at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She has worked previously in gallery education roles at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and the National Galleries of Scotland. She supports the work of engage, the National Association of Gallery Education, and is currently the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for the engage journal. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2016 to visit US museums and research the creative process of museum educators and new approaches to museum learning. Sarah has a long-standing interest in creative learning, and experimental, playful and unexpected approaches to programming for museum audiences.

Experimenting in Museums, Museum Tech

Revolution: MuseumNext Portland – Call for Speakers

Leave a comment

Written by Mike Murawski

I am so proud and excited that my home institution, the Portland Art Museum, will be hosting this fall’s MuseumNext conference.  I have been fortunate enough to attend MuseumNext both times that it has held conferences here in the United States thus far: first in Indianapolis, and mostly recently in New York.  This conference, perhaps more than any other, brings together a diversity of thinkers and leaders in the field of museums, attracting speakers and attendees from all around the globe.  And with this fall’s theme of REVOLUTION, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be a powerful, transformative event that brings together risk-takers and changemakers from museums as well as the arts & culture sector.  I am thoroughly excited to showcase the great work happening right here at the Portland Art Museum, and welcome attendees to gain a richer understanding of the innovative, diverse, and creative things happening here in the incredible city of Portland (far beyond the stereotypes of Portlandia).  Hope to see many of you here this fall!

*     *     *

call_for_papers

MuseumNext USA Call for Speakers
Portland, Oregon
2 – 4 October, 2017

Deadline: Friday 16 June (5pm PTZ)

MuseumNext is a global conference on the future of museums. Since 2009 it has acted as a platform for showcasing best practice today to shine a light on the museum of tomorrow. On October 2-4, 2017, we will be holding our third annual conference in the United States – with three days of presentations, discussion,s and debates at Portland Art Museum.

Every MuseumNext conference has a theme, around which the community comes together to discuss the future of museums. This year the theme for MuseumNext USA will be Revolution. Museums aren’t strangers to revolution, we are constantly responding to and transformed by our changing society, whether that’s due to politics, environment or technology. Our institutions don’t stand still. At the same time, having the mandate to conserve, revolutions are a risk and challenge to many museums.

We are now inviting proposals from our community on the theme of revolution, looking at what that means to individuals and institutions around the world.

Taking a stand – How are museums acting as agents of change within their communities and fighting for social good?

Managing change – How are museums responding to a rapidly changing society or change within their organizations?

Mini Revolutions – What trends are revolutionising the field of museums, from the maker movement to being safe places for refugees?

Collecting Revolutions – Museums collect and tell stories through their collections, but many of today’s most important stories center around civil movements, hashtags and other, uncollectable ideas. How do we document the revolutionary now?

Or – We welcome your own ideas about how revolution relates to museums.

MuseumNext follows a fast-paced format of twenty-minute presentations with the focus very much on practice rather than theory (please note that this is the only format we’ll use at this event and we aren’t seeking longer presentations or workshops at this time).

Proposals for presentations should contain a title, names of presenters, a summary of the themes to be addressed, relevant links as well as a description of the expected learning outcomes.

We offer those speaking at the conference one free ticket per session, and speakers are responsible for their own travel and accommodation.

All proposals should be submitted via this form.

Experimenting in Museums, Teaching Tools

It’s Okay to Turn Our Back on the Art

2 Comments

Written by Holly Gillette as part of the Gallery Teaching Lab series

As an art museum educator, it is imperative to always connect back to the art in our teaching. Or is it?

I follow a dialogical approach when I teach in museum galleries with adult visitors. I always invite participants to look slowly, to savor a long look at one work of art, a luxury we don’t often have in our busy lives. As the conversation among the group grows and might veer off in one direction or another, I try to redirect the conversation back to the art. We are in a museum with a physical work of art, something tangible that we could touch (theoretically, of course!), why would we not keep the conversation about the artwork in front of us? It is an aspect of object-based teaching that has been important to me as a museum educator, but recently I wondered: Is it okay to turn our back on the art to continue the group-led conversation elsewhere?

photo 1
Photo by Robert Wedemeyer | Courtesy of Skirball Cultural Center

As part of the Gallery Teaching Lab developed by Theresa Sotto, assistant director of academic programs at the Hammer Museum, I had the opportunity to experiment with colleagues in the Skirball Cultural Center’s galleries in February 2017. I’ve been a participant of the program since its inception, and always looked forward to the vast range of experiences my colleagues brought to the Lab.

For my experiment, I wanted to explore how information plays into interpretation and how we, as educators, need to be mindful of what we bring into the conversation. I am also interested in ways we may discuss current events and hot button issues in respectful and considerate ways when they connect to objects in our galleries. Lichtenstein’s “Gun in America” series, part of The Skirball Cultural Center’s exhibition Pop for the People: Roy Lichtenstein in L.A., seemed a perfect fit to experiment with both of these concepts.

The Skirball Cultural Center juxtaposed two TIME Magazine covers, each published about three weeks apart. The TIME cover on the right portrayed an energetic politician, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, issued on May 24, 1968, the year that he campaigned for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. The TIME cover on the left was printed on June 21, 1968, two weeks after he was assassinated.

photo 2
Photo by Robert Wedemeyer | Courtesy of Skirball Cultural Center

Our focus for this discussion was the June 21st cover, an illustration TIME magazine commissioned Lichtenstein to create shortly after Bobby Kennedy’s death. The cover reads “The Gun in America” and featured an article titled “Nation: The Gun Under Fire.” After some digging, I was able to get my hands on the article which is both a reaction to Kennedy’s assassination as well as a response to the gun violence that plagued the 1960s. Bobby’s brother, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, just a few months before Bobby’s death. America then, as now, was grappling with similar issues regarding gun control, which I believed to be an important aspect of my experiment. I was especially interested in how the text of the article affected the interpretation of the image on the magazine cover, not only in 1968, but today.

I set up my experiment into three parts that included a free write, small group discussion, and large group discussion. To give you an idea of what I was planning, here’s an abridged version of my teaching plan:

  • Introduction: Before entering the galleries, advise group that this is a safe space and we must respect everyone. Participation is optional, if it gets too much, it’s okay to step away.
  • Free Write – 5 minutes: Take a look at the artworks, get up close, take a few minutes to free write or draw. We will spend 5 minutes silently looking.
  • Discussion – 10 minutes: Group discussion of the artwork. What bubbled up for you? Would anyone like to share?
  • Pair Share – 20 minutes: Divide groups into pairs. Distribute an excerpt from the article to each group. Invite groups to move to another area of the gallery where they can get together to read the excerpt and discuss. Some questions to think about while discussing: How does this piece make you feel? Do you agree or disagree? Why? This was written in 1968, but, are there parallels today?
  • Discussion – 20 minutes: Bring the groups back together. Groups share their conversations, if they desire to do so.  Briefly summarize your excerpt, what thoughts bubbled up for you? What debates did you have in your group, if any?
  • Conclusion – 5 minutes: Thank you to everyone for being vulnerable today.

 Let’s face it, above was my teaching plan. When we entered the gallery, I soon realized that there was particularly loud jazz music playing in the exhibit. Apparently Lichtenstein loved jazz and the music is the soundtrack of Kamasi Washington’s break out jazz album, The Epic. A rookie mistake, because I didn’t have the opportunity to visit the exhibition before I was teaching in it! The music was welcome during silent looking but when we started discussing, it became difficult to hear even in our small group of ten participants. Our initial discussion drew from the physicality of the objects, seeing Lichtenstein’s hand and process. It then led to people sharing their feelings, one participant commented on how she was desensitized by the image of a gun. Another commented that they had recently been in the vicinity of an act of gun violence, and that their feelings now are different than if they had seen this image prior to the incident.

As the discussion grew beyond the formal qualities of the work itself, I used that moment to segue to the second part of the experiment. I divided the group into pairs and gave each pair an excerpt from the 1968 TIME magazine article. Pairs were encouraged to venture into other parts of the gallery or even outside on the courtyard to sit and discuss anything that developed for them when thinking about the artwork and reading the excerpt.

After 20 minutes, I wanted to bring everyone back into the gallery in front of the artworks, but instead, I made the decision to gather everyone outside the galleries where we could gather without the distraction of the music. We sat in a circle, I asked each group to share if they wanted to. Much of the excerpts from the 1968 article were arguments about gun control. Discussion from the group dug deep into this difficult and complex issue. Many participants discussed how they couldn’t fathom someone needing to own a gun, some shared stories about how family members own guns and either agree or disagree with them. Some stories were about growing up in rural communities where hunting was the norm. The person, who mentioned at the beginning of the talk that they were recently near an act of gun violence, felt safe enough to share her story. Parallels were made from 1968 to today, and it was argued that not much has changed.

What I had intended to be a 20 minute group-share turned into a 50 minute discussion. Instead of bringing it back to the work of art, I lost myself in the conversation. Instead of acting as facilitator, I became a participant. When I realized we had gone well beyond our hour together, cutting into our debrief time for the GTLab, I tried to reel the group back in and get feedback on the activity. To my surprise, the group just wanted to continue discussing the topic.

I was so humbled by my colleagues and the conversation we had that day. As we all walked back to our meeting room Rachel Stark, Assistant Director of Education at the Skirball Cultural Center, turned to me and thanked me for allowing us to “turn our back” on the art to have the real nitty gritty conversation. It was at that moment I realized that what I learned from this experiment wasn’t what I initially expected. Yes, I wanted to explore ways of using objects in our collection as entry points to discuss current events and complex issues, but I realized something more important. When it means continuing the conversation and focusing on the needs of the people present, it is okay to turn our back on the art and continue the conversation where the group needs to go, even if that means we aren’t focusing on the artwork anymore.

We all need an outlet in this political climate; if a work of art can jump-start important conversation, amazing! Let the conversation go where it needs to go.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to continue the conversation. Please comment here, or email me at hgillette@lacma.org.

*     *     *

 

About the Author

gillette_photoHOLLY GILLETTE is an art museum educator with an interest in gallery teaching and community building. She is currently an Education Coordinator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) where she oversees the school and community partnership program Art Programs with the Community: LACMA On-Site. Prior to working at LACMA, she began her career in Museum Education at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, focusing on school, early childhood, and family audiences. Holly holds a MS.Ed. in leadership in museum education from the Bank Street College Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in art history and studio art from University of California, Davis. Holly’s postings are her own and don’t necessarily represent LACMA’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

 

Experimenting in Museums, Inclusive Practices

Be a CHANGEMAKER – Apply for MuseumCamp 2017 Now!

Leave a comment

Written by Mike Murawski

Are you a passionately-creative thinker who wants to make a positive change in your community? Are you frustrated with the slow pace of change at your museum, non-profit organization, community group, or school?  Are you tired of conferences filled with static presentations and “show and tell” sessions that don’t seem to connect with your goals and vision for change?  Do you dream big about taking action, making new things possible, and thinking outside the box?  Do you thrive in a diverse environment filled with others who share your passion, energy, and vision?   Then you need to be seriously thinking about applying for this year’s MuseumCamp at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH).

MuseumCamp is an annual professional development event hosted by MAH and the inspiring Nina Simon. Each year, the camp brings together diverse, passionate people for a sleep-away experience for adults who learn together through active, creative workshops and activities.  The 2017 MuseumCamp theme is CHANGEMAKERS, and I am so proud to be working with this summer’s group as a Counselor along with the phenomenal Ebony McKinney, Founding Director of Emerging Arts Professionals/SFBA — a network focused on empowerment, leadership, and growth of next generation arts and culture workers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In beautiful Santa Cruz, we will spend 2.5 days together exploring the ways we make change in our work, our communities, and the world. We will focus specifically on how we can use creative projects as catalysts for community action and change. Whether you are dreaming about change, making it happen, or have battle scars to share, we want you here this year.

This year’s MuseumCamp will be challenging — but not in a frenetic, obstacle course way. It will challenge us to confront our fears about change, empower others, and create the future we seek.

Learn more about the details of this year’s MuseumCamp here, and Apply Now — the deadline for applications is March 15th, so you need to get online now and make it happen.

I look forward to seeing many of you there this summer!!!!

Museum-Camp-2014

*     *     *     *     *

Here are Nina Simon’s Five Reasons to Come to MuseumCamp 2017:

  1. Dive into co-creative project design. A month before MuseumCamp, the MAH is opening a new exhibition, Lost Childhoods, co-developed with foster youth, youth advocates, and artists in our community. You’ll tour the exhibition with the team, discuss its impact, and explore the process behind it. This project is experimental, complicated work. Foster youth are central to every decision and direction. Artists are striving to follow their direction to beautiful ends. Dozens of youth advocates and partners co-own the process and are bringing their own dreams, talents, and connections to the work. At MuseumCamp, we’ll pull back the curtain on Lost Childhoods’ process and product. We’ll brainstorm how to partner with your community on projects that ignite social action.
  2. Meet amazing colleagues and counselors. MuseumCamp attracts creative changemakers of all stripes and backgrounds. Last year Camp welcomed academics, museum folk, librarians, poets, artists, bike advocates, engineers, and one American Ninja Warrior. This year’s applicants include social scientists, activists, entrepreneurs, educators, and artists. We’ve got two incredible outside counselors–Ebony McKinney and Mike Murawski–and more partners coming onboard. You want to meet these people. You want to learn with them. MuseumCamp will help you build a diverse network of inspiring compatriots for your own personal journey to creative change.
  3. Build – and share – a creative action plan for change. The central activity of MuseumCamp is a whole-camp project where we work in teams to make something. (Check out past projects here.) This year, we’re building a creative change toolkit. As a team, you will design it. After Camp, the MAH team will turn it into a beautiful product for you to keep. You’ll create it, use it, and share it with others around the world.
  4. Find out what happens when a museum breaks out of its building. Later this spring, the MAH is opening a major expansion in Abbott Square, the plaza adjacent to the museum. Abbott Square will be a creative heart for the city, offering free events, workshops, performances, and playful programs in partnership with community groups. At MuseumCamp, you’ll be among the first to experience it. If you or your organization are considering doing more work in public space, this is a great opportunity to learn more firsthand.
  5. Relax, recharge, and explore. Swim with sea lions. Ride a 100-year old wooden roller coaster. Sleep in a museum. All optional. All incredible. All at MuseumCamp.
You can apply for MuseumCamp until March 15. Now’s the time. Let’s do it.
MuseumCamp2014
“One Minute Art Project” at the 2014 Museum Camp.
Experimenting in Museums, Teaching Tools

Gallery Teaching Lab: Where Rules Are Meant to Be Broken

1 Comment

Written by Theresa Sotto

What would happen in the galleries if we could only communicate through gestures? How might critics’ reviews about exhibitions be meaningfully incorporated in gallery teaching? How would museumgoers react if asked to draw a work of art as perfectly as possible–the opposite of conventional wisdom in museum education? These are just a few questions that educators from cultural institutions across Southern California have explored in a program developed by and for museum educators.

image1
Museum educators from three different institutions–Zoe Silverman from the Hammer, Rachel Stark from the Skirball, and William Zaluski from the Getty Center–act out a short skit in a role-playing experiment led by Chelsea Hogan, who then worked at ESMoA. Photo courtesy of Chelsea Hogan.

I launched Gallery Teaching Lab (GTLab) at the Hammer Museum in October 2014 with educators from seven Los Angeles museums in an effort to foster innovation in gallery teaching. Now in its third year, the program has doubled in size to include fourteen participating institutions who each take turns hosting a GTLab approximately every six weeks. Twenty-five practitioners between Long Beach and Pasadena have the opportunity to try a new teaching strategy in an ever-changing space and receive constructive feedback from colleagues. Participants can use GTLab as a testing ground for nascent gallery teaching ideas without the pressure of building internal buy-in or fear of an unsuccessful experience with museum visitors. GTLab also offers educators an opportunity to eschew traditional or habitual teaching strategies and set aside their respective institutions’ existing programs or pedagogical philosophies.

Beginnings

The very first GTLab, which was led by Veronica Alvarez, Director of School and Teacher Programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was an experiment in facilitating silent conversations in order to create a safe space to explore potentially controversial topics. Veronica was inspired by Child Guidance Toys (1965) by Robert Heinecken, which was on view at the Hammer Museum in the exhibition Robert Heinecken: Object Matter. Created two years after president John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Child Guidance Toys poignantly juxtaposes two advertisements of two different products–a toy rifle and a miniature replica of JFK.

Prior to viewing Child Guidance Toys with GTLab participants, Veronica displayed three large sheets of butcher paper, each with a prompt that was relevant to Heinecken’s work: consumerism, gun culture, and the claim that artists make us more aware of social issues. We were asked to silently and anonymously address each of these prompts or someone else’s comments. In a post-GTLab reflection, Veronica wrote that “participants commented on the fact that they enjoyed sharing things that they might not have, had it been a verbal conversation. Others noted that they were able to discuss sensitive topics in a safe environment.”

image2
A prompt used in a silent conversation led by Veronica Alvarez, Director of School and Teacher Programs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

After writing and reading comments in response to the prompts in a classroom space, Veronica led us in an inquiry-based discussion of Child Guidance Toys in the exhibition space. In front of the work of art, we wasted no time making connections between the imagery and the serious themes that had already been explored during the silent conversations. The resulting discussion about Heinecken’s work was thought-provoking and multi-layered. But equally thought-provoking–at least for a room full of museum educators–was the conversation about the experiment itself. Educators mused: Did the pre-selected prompts limit conversation about the work of art? Which audiences would this activity be appropriate for? How would the silent conversations differ if they took place in the galleries? Since everyone responding to the prompts were in the same room at the same time, the comments were not completely anonymous. How does semi-anonymity impact one’s ability to freely share one’s thoughts?

Following her GTLab experiment, Veronica incorporated the silent conversation activity in a teacher program–with great success. However, successfully implementing a GTLab experiment with  museum visitors is more of a fortuitous outcome rather than a desired goal.

Experiments in Self-Guided Experiences

For my own first experiment, I was interested in exploring self-guided activities, and not just because I was interested in their format–one that typically doesn’t impart more than basic or cursory information about works of art. In the days leading up to my experiment, other work commitments took priority and I waited until the last minute to consider what I would do. My experiment became an opportunity for me to address two questions. The first: Can a self-guided experience be just as (or more) engaging and foster as much understanding about a work of art as a guided experience? The second question was one that I sometimes face more often than I’d like to admit: Is it possible to facilitate meaningful experiences with works of art when you don’t have time to properly research the works of art on view?

I decided to try a semi-self-guided experience with the exhibition Apparitions: Frottages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now because of the wide variety of works, subjects, and artists represented in the galleries. I briefly introduced the exhibition and then distributed prompts in three categories—1) Select, 2) Question, and 3) Translate. Working with partners, participants picked one prompt from each of the categories, one at a time, at random. For the Select cards, participants were prompted to choose a work that they associated with adjectives like secretive, awkward, or friendly. Once a work was selected, partners picked a Question card and discussed answers to prompts such as: “Could this work change someone’s life? If so, how?”; “Why do you think this work was selected for inclusion in this exhibition?”; and “In what ways is this work relevant to people in Los Angeles?” I gave some pairs more than one Question card if they seemed to answer their first question quickly. By the time the pairs completed their Select and Question prompts, they had already discussed their selected work for approximately 20 minutes and were ready to “translate” the artwork. This is where the activity got more experimental. I challenged peers to reflect on what is essential about the work of art and to figure out how those qualities could be translated into another form or genre–such as a Craigslist ad, a restaurant menu, or thirty seconds of sound. Not only was this part of the activity a lot of fun, but it also helped the group come to a nuanced and deep understanding about their selected works while stretching them to think creatively.

image3
A GTLab experiment informed the goals for this all-ages Discovery Guide.

After the experiment, GTLab participants remarked that they enjoyed completing the activities and they were able to make meaningful connections to their selected works of art. They also raised questions about appropriate audience applications and attendance limitations, and whether front-loading or modeling would be necessary with school groups. All good questions. But despite the overall positive and useful feedback, I never tried the same Select – Question – Translate prompts with actual visitors. For me, that wasn’t the point.

Taking Risks, Breaking Rules

I originally conceived of GTLab to foster innovation in gallery teaching–in my own practice as well as that of my colleagues. In fact, for the first couple of years of the program, I challenged all participants to follow one rule: your experiment should be an activity or strategy that you have not tried before. My experiment pushed me to re-evaluate what I want self-guided activities as a whole to accomplish: to foster personal and meaningful connections to art, to have fun learning with the people you came to the museum with, and to encourage creativity. These are by no means innovative goals. Rather they speak to the heart of what we do as museum educators.

The process of organizing and participating in gallery experiments has made me reflect on Gallery Teaching Lab itself. Innovation isn’t the main goal after all. Gallery Teaching Lab comprises a collective of peers who manage or support educator trainings at their respective institutions. For this professional learning community to be sustainable and useful for all participants, rules and goals should change based on the facilitator, the chosen experiment, and the galleries. What once took place at the Hammer Museum every six weeks on Wednesdays from 12-2PM now occurs at one of fourteen institutions on a day and time that works best for the host institution with goals that make the most sense for the facilitator. As is the case for all good labs, rules are meant to be broken.

*     *     *     *     *

About the Author

THERESA SOTTO is assistant director of academic programs at the Hammer Museum, where she oversees educational programming for college, family, and K-12 school groups. Theresa has been working at the crossroads of education and the arts since 2001. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked at the Getty Museum, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and has served as a consultant for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Theresa received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and is also a published poet.

Experimenting in Museums, Inclusive Practices

Getting Outside the Bubble: Museum Social Action Project at MuseumNext

Leave a comment

Reposted and revised from MuseumNext, a global conference on the future of museums which has acted as a platform for showcasing best practice today to shine a light on the museum of tomorrow.  Check out more details about the upcoming conference in New York by visiting their new website.

MuseumNext is very much a collaboration which brings together museum professionals to share what they feel is important and exciting, that is true of the presentations and workshops which our community propose through our call for papers and through the other activities which form our conference fringe.

Since 2009, we’ve had everything from brainstorming wild ideas with Nina Simon, to a symposium on heritage and retail to playing with the latest sensor technology, but for our conference in New York City we have a very exciting addition to the program.

Mike Murawski, Director of Education & Public Programs at Portland Art Museum, challenged us to build a Museum Social Action Project into the program and offered along with Monica Montgomery to make the project happen.

MuseumNext asked Mike to tell us more about this exciting project:

How did the Museum Social Action Project come about?

At a time when museum professionals are increasingly thinking about the social impact of museums as well as the role these institutions play within our local communities, it seemed urgent to get outside the ‘bubble’ of the conference and more directly engage with organizations responding to local realities.

I was invited to present at the MuseumNext conference in New York on the topic of enacting change in museums and converting talk into action, so it felt necessary to get outside the conference venue and ‘walk the walk.’  Not having a strong familiarity with the local communities across New York, I immediately reached out to Monica Montgomery (MuseumHue, Museum of Impact) to explore this idea of a Museum Social Action Project.

Monica and I brainstormed about some possible ideas, and she connected us with the team at The Laundromat Project, an amazing organization that works to bring socially engaged arts programming to laundromats and other everyday community spaces.  

Why should a museum conference try and facilitate something like this?

As museum professionals, it is vital that we enact a mindset of giving back and supporting grassroots organizations like The Laundromat Project that strengthen our communities. Each and every professional conference should be focusing more on how it can be connected and relevant to the place of its convening, and not just think about locations as conference hotels and convention centers.

Conference sessions, panels, and topics can certainly be more grounded in the realities and issues of the conference’s city and neighborhoods, but I think it’s important to get outside the walls of the conference, explore direct ways to see our ideas in action, and be a responsible part of building stronger communities (beyond the spotlight of the conference).

What is The Laundromat Project?

Launched in 2006, The Laundromat Project brings socially relevant and socially engaged arts programming to laundromats and other everyday community spaces in order to reach as many of our neighbors as possible. The LP’s artists and staff work to amplify the creativity that already exists within communities by using arts and culture to build community networks, solve problems, and enhance the sense of ownership in the places where we live, work, and grow. The LP is particularly committed to long-term and sustained investment in communities of color as well as those living on modest incomes.

Their Kelly Street Initiative was launched in 2016 in partnership with Workforce Housing Group, Kelly Street Garden, and Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, transforming a 2 bedroom-apartment on Kelly Street in Longwood, South Bronx, into a thriving creative community hub, with artist studios, arts programming, and community partnerships that allow The LP to engage the larger Kelly Street community.  We are honored to be collaborating with Hatuey Ramos-Fermín, The LP’s Director of Programs & Community Engagement, to build this Museum Social Action Project together for MuseumNext.

What’s the project that you’re doing?

Participants attending this Museum Social Action Project will meet staff and artists at The Laundromat Project, learn about their various projects and programs, and tour the Kelly Street Initiative location as well as learn more about that neighborhood.  LP staff and artists will then lead a short workshop and discussion on how organizations can learn more about a neighborhood’s capacities, creativity, and skills through community asset mapping.

Participants will also discuss ways to build a sustained investment in community partnerships, rather than one-sided outreach efforts or one-time program offerings. As a vital part of this project, we also ask that participants find a way to give back to The Laundromat Project and help them create more joyful spaces of creativity and community. Participants can do this by bringing an art supply Gift Card from Dick Blick or by donating directly to the Laundromat Project online (which I strongly encourage people to do, even if you are not involved in this project or the MuseumNext conference).

23501550362_ce672bf47b_z
The Laundromat Project’s Kelly Street Housewarming Party. Photo by Osjua A. Newton, Copyright © 2015

 What do you think the delegates will get out of it?

The aim is for delegates attending the Museum Social Action Project to be able to gain a more concrete understanding of community-based practices, of how cultural organizations can serve as sites of social action and relevance, of how museums and arts non-profits can bring people together a work to build stronger, more resilient communities.   They will gain skills from The LP staff and from each other around community asset mapping, and really listening to local community voices.  

What impact can the project have?

For me, personally, there are a few big “what if’s” at the heart of this type of Museum Social Action Project.  I know that museums and cultural organizations across the world are striving to be an essential part of their communities; but what if our communities could become an essential part of our institutions?  What if we could effectively re-center this movement for change around our local communities and the power, knowledge, creativity, and capacities that they can bring to our institutions?  What if conferences and professional gatherings spent more time doing and less time talking?

I don’t think we’ll achieve this all at our half-day Museum Social Action Project this November in New York, but I hope others are inspired to do similar types of projects and experiences, getting outside the walls of our conferences and harnessing the power of museum professionals to learn from and give back to our communities.

 —

The Museum Social Action Project is one of the fringe activities for MuseumNext New York City. The conference takes place 14 – 16 November 2016 at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Find out more about the conference here.

Featured header image: The Laundromat Project Kelly Street Housewarming, Photo by Osjua A. Newton, copyright © 2015.

Spotlight on Practice, Teaching Tools

Teaching Lab: Towards an Institutional Culture of Learning

2 Comments

Written by Elizabeth Williams, Yale University Art Gallery

What does good museum teaching look like? How do we as educators learn from each other? How do we constantly stay fresh and incorporate new approaches to teaching? What are our shared values for teaching in museums?

These are among the questions that my colleagues and I in education regularly pose, and which led us to launch a project called Teaching Lab almost two years ago. Teaching Lab is not a concept born at Yale; it originated at the Brooklyn Museum in the 1990s as a way for its educators to convene, outside of logistical concerns, to talk about gallery teaching. Many of us work at such a pace that, without a structure like Teaching Lab embedded into our routine, reflection simply would not happen. So when my colleague Jessica Sack introduced this great idea from the Brooklyn Museum, we adapted it to fit our needs at the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG).

Teaching Lab at YUAG has been a way to reflect, experiment, and collaborate on issues and ideas related to teaching and learning. Monthly sessions seek to explore intersections across traditionally segmented areas of work both in education (e.g. adult, family, academic, K-12, public programs) and Gallery-wide (e.g. curatorial, education, exhibitions, registrar, etc.) The aim is to facilitate dialogue, and perhaps collaborations, related to the project of museum teaching.

Key to our sessions is that each is peer-initiated and led, with the organizer (myself) serving as the moderator. There are no defined outcomes for Teaching Lab, though some sessions have resulted in new projects. By way of example, a few departmental Teaching Labs have included: a session that brought together education teams from the YUAG and Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History for a discussion of different approaches to teaching with objects, especially those that can be classified as both art and artifact; a session to consider the Hirshhorn’s signature drop-in teen program, ARTLAB+, as a springboard for conversation related to how educators can, and should, respond to diverse audiences; and a session to consider a new digital app designed for a special exhibition, focusing on the self-guided visitor’s learning experience.

It occurred to us that the conversations we are having relate not just to education but to the entire museum. Everyone at the museum, in effect, teaches in some capacity. What, then, might it mean to broaden the conversation? Will other staff want to participate? How do we make the dialogue both accessible and stimulating, to have the most widespread appeal?

Getting Things Started

We started first by talking with people across the Gallery to gauge interest in the possibility of a staff-wide Teaching Lab. I realized early on that it was difficult to talk about something like this in the abstract, and I was often fielding the question: “So what do you want from me?” I didn’t really know the answer at first. After many departmental conversations about possible topics, effective structures, and anticipated barriers, we distilled the core ingredients from our departmental version of Teaching Lab that we wanted to maintain: that it be peer-driven, that it be conversational, and that it be experimental. We also decided that a natural place to start would be with objects, so we decided that the first staff-wide Teaching Lab would mine the concept of “close looking,” a term often used by colleagues across the museum to describe our teaching practice.

We roughly sketched out what a day-long Teaching Lab could look like: three sessions, starting with looking and learning together, that would eventually zoom out to examine some of the bigger questions related to audience and expertise. We enlisted peers from across the museum to co-lead each session, and these colleagues would ultimately shape the day.

On June 17, the YUAG Education Department presented the first staff-wide Teaching Lab. We invited all staff—from security guards to the Director—and offered three sessions over the course of the day. To our delight, almost 50 people of our staff of roughly 160, including four senior staff members and the Director, attended. We had representation from almost every department in the museum, from the Registrar to Development to Curatorial.

With Close Looking as our frame, our first session was entitled “Close Looking from Multiple Perspectives.” Modeled on our typical three-objects/hour education-guided visit, this session was led by three colleagues from the Education, Curatorial, and Conservation departments. Guided by a single theme, which the three presenters mutually determined, the session was meant to showcase different approaches to teaching with objects. With few parameters, facilitators were asked to teach a single object for 20 minutes and to make sure it was connected to the other objects through the common theme. One group, for example, explored the theme of absence and loss: an educator considered it in a painting by contemporary artist Titus Kaphar, a paintings conservator discussed it in a 12th century Italian panel painting by the Magdalen Master, and a curator talked about it with a 1st century Roman portrait sculpture. A member of the Education staff then moderated a reflective conversation at the end to distill both the participants’ experience as well as the facilitators’.

The second session was entitled “Multiple Frames: The Object in Context” and considered a single object through multiple lenses of analysis and understanding. To contextualize the processes of making and viewing art, participants spent half of the session in front of Jackson Pollock’s Arabesque, exploring how listening to jazz, reading quotations by and about the artist, and physically moving around a canvas on the floor, complicates the experience of viewing and interpreting a work of art. The group then moved to explore Pollock’s materials and methods in a studio session with one of our painting conservators, considering how experimenting with materials and methods might enrich our understanding of the art work.

Molleen Theodore, Associate Curator of Programs, leads staff in a listening and looking exercise in front of Jackson Pollock’s Arabesque (number 13a.)
Molleen Theodore, Associate Curator of Programs, leads staff in a listening and looking exercise in front of Jackson Pollock’s Arabesque (number 13a.)

The last session of the day was a roundtable conversation, intended to help us reflect on the experiential components of the morning but also to zoom out to consider the less obvious ways that museums teach, how we understand the role of expertise among our staff and our visitors, and how we can be more responsive to our audiences. These conversations were illuminating, especially when the group was asked to brainstorm ways that teaching and learning happen outside of the guided visit or through interpretive materials. From conversations that security personnel have with visitors to the arrangement of postcards on the wall, the group came up with fresh insights on how the Gallery regularly “teaches” and how every staff member has a stake in our educational mission. This discussion was collegial and fruitful, and as we ended the conversation with time for suggesting future Teaching Lab topics, participants raised many ideas related to better understanding the experience of our visitor and continuing to mine what it means to learn deeply in a museum.  They also evinced a keen and welcome interest in how we can collectively address issues related to inclusion and identity in our work, and plans are now underway to make this the topic of a future staff-wide teaching lab.

Beginning to Build a Culture of Learning

We never could have imagined that the staff would be as receptive to Teaching Lab as they were. Since it required actually doing it to begin to grasp what this could become, the staff took a risk in setting aside almost an entire day to participate. As part of our own reflective process, the Education Department surveyed people anonymously to ask for their feedback. When asked to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 (poor to excellent, respectively), 27.8 % rated the experience a 4 and 72.2% rated it a 5. When asked whether they would participate in future Teaching Labs, 100% responded yes. In the open comments section, participants repeatedly emphasized how meaningful it was to come together as a staff to learn from each other (and to get to know one another); they had expected that Education would be imparting best practices and were surprised that it was co-presented by colleagues from across the museum; and they were surprised by how much fun they had. Our Education staff, for its part, learned a tremendous amount in the process of reaching out to colleagues from across the institution, and we have been pleased about the new relationships that have developed as a result.

I don’t want to overstate the impact of this one staff-wide Teaching Lab; in some ways, we have indeed returned to business as usual. But Teaching Lab at its core is about building a culture of learning, and this was a very positive step in that direction. Whether it be among those who are explicitly educators, or whether it be re-framed more broadly to consider and leverage the entire staff’s contributions to teaching in a museum, it is a powerful tool and structure for learning, for teaching, and for reflecting.

As we turn our attention to the future of Teaching Lab, we can’t help but think—and hope—that this experimental and peer-driven model might lead to new ways of considering the project of teaching in the museum and take our work in interesting and challenging new directions.

Staff explore Pollock’s materials in a studio session, led by Assistant Curator of Conservation Cindy Schwarz (not pictured.)
Staff explore Pollock’s materials in a studio session, led by Assistant Curator of Conservation Cindy Schwarz (not pictured.)

About the Author

Education DepartmentELIZABETH WILLIAMS is the John Walsh Senior Fellow in Education at the Yale University Art Gallery. Prior to Yale, she was the Director of Engagement and Learning at the Mississippi Museum of Art, where she oversaw the museum’s family, school, and community programs. Elizabeth has held positions at The Phillips Collection, the Harvard Art Museums, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Americans for the Arts. She holds a Master’s in Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University

Featured header image: Gallery staff, led by Wurtele Gallery Teacher Tony Coleman, looking at this Equestrian Shrine Figure by Bamgboye of Odo-Owa.

Field Notes, Podcast

Podcast: 4 Museum Educators & 4 Days at SXSWedu

3 Comments

Posted by Emily Kotecki, North Carolina Museum of Art

From early childhood to higher ed to policy, SXSWedu aims to represent everything innovative happening in education. Museums are just starting to make a presence. I estimate that museum and library professional made up 1% of the 7,000 attendees.

Given our small presence, it was interesting to note where we intersected with the national conversation about the future of education (personalized learning, equity and access) and where we differed (STEM v. STEAM).

I sat down with three other museum educators during our time at SXSWedu: Juline Chevalier from Minneapolis Institute of Art; Claire Moore from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Anne Kraybill from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.  We talked a bit about our first-time experiences, perceptions, and reflections on SXSWedu.

(Note: Anne, Claire and I were one of three sessions – out of 400+! – talking about museum innovations.)

Here is a link to the SoundCloud podcast audio (7 min), and we’ve embedded the content below, as well. We hope you can listen to this on your desktop or mobile devices, but please share any problems or issues you have with the media (this is the first ever “podcast” attempt on ArtMuseumTeaching, which is why we’re starting small):

While SXSWedu started just six years ago, it has expanded its offerings every year. For example, this year was first year SXSWedu:

  • had an arts thread
  • had a museum and library professionals meet up
  • had a museum educator on the advisory board (yours truly!)
  • had a “Learning Spaces” track for session proposals

This young conference is still evolving and could look very different in the next few years. As we noted in the podcast, we believe it’s important for the museum field to attend and present at conferences like SXSWedu in order move from the periphery of education to becoming integral to the conversation.

CdD6DZJUYAAoyX_.jpg_large

Featured header image from http://usa.sae.edu/news-and-events/news/sae-chicagos-martin-atkins-to-speak-at-sxsw-edu-2016/

 

Field Notes, OpenThink

Museums & the Future of Learning

Leave a comment

By Emily Kotecki and Jill Taylor, North Carolina Museum of Art

Over the last year, the North Carolina Museum of Art has been documenting the design process we’ve been using in our IMLS planning grant on the role of museums in next-generation learning. On Saturday, January 30, 2016 (after a week’s delay due to weather), we held a Thought Partner Summit for our two advisory panels and a Future of Learning panel discussion for the public to reflect on the work we’ve done so far and prepare for the final stretch of our grant.

In the morning, our collaborative planning team of P-16 educators from across the state met with three out of the nine thought partners (the other six were not able to attend the rescheduled event). These thought partners are national leaders in the fields of education, museums, and technology. Working in affinity groups, they shared ideas about teacher professional development, experiences for students that happen online and onsite, and participatory gallery spaces. Thought Partners helped groups become aware of potential models for programs, recognize gaps in our planning, and find connections between prototype ideas.

We then invited the public to join the discourse in a lively panel discussion that afternoon (#NCMAfuturelearn) investigating the future of learning and the role of the art museum in shaping and supporting that future. Sylvea Hollis, from the Center for Future of Museums, moderated a panel featuring Corey Madden, executive director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts; Matthew Rascoff, Vice President of Learning Technology and Innovation at the University of North Carolina; and Dr. Keith Sawyer, Morgan Professor of Educational Innovation at UNC-Chapel Hill. The full panel discussion recording is linked here through Livestream.

Here are three (of many) big takeaways from the panel that help us take a closer look at what the future of learning might look like and what role museums might play in that future.

1. How to maximize the learning space

The environment in which people learn can have a huge effect on how they learn, what they learn, the questions they ask, the ideas they generate and so on. Corey Madden used her combined experience as a leader at Kenan Institute for the Arts and a practicing artist to think about how spaces can help shape a learner’s perspective and develop new ideas.

“The key idea of education and art is the creation of perspective. What I’m most interested in, is to give that experience to the audience…It’s not me imposing [my] perspective on them…it’s an invitation, a provocation…to use their curiosity to find themselves in a place where that new perspective is created and that generates more and more ideas.”

But what if that space is virtual? Physical? A hybrid?  What are opportunities in person that are not possible online, and vice versa?

For all the technology we have access to, the “social cultural needs of human beings haven’t changed,” says Corey. We can watch a lecture online and then use that to catapult us into a lively discussion with peers when we get to class or the museum. Technology can free up learners to engage with the human part of themselves. She continues:

“If you combine the portal of technology, the reality of the actual space, and the incredible imaginative capacity of students, you can imagine that you can use place and space to transform how people learn.”

2. Imagining jazz-inspired learning frameworks

If you listen to improvisational jazz, it’s not completely improv. That smooth melody is guided by some sort of structure, whether it’s a genre, chord, or song form.  Similarly, Dr. Keith Sawyer, a jazz pianist, sees effective creative learning as “a process of discovery, a process of experimentation, a process of making failures, and switching gears. I think of it as an improvisational process that is necessary to … becoming an effective creator.”

But the paradox he sees for educators is to: (A) engage in “an improvisational dialogue where the teacher is the one that provides the guidance,” and then (B) balance the top down constraints that come from institutional budgets, state testing, and curricula with the necessary need for “bottom up improvisational creativity that is driven by the learner.”

During the Q&A portion of the panel, a student in the audience who is also a member of the NCMA Teen Arts Council, shared her experience with a teacher who made learning AP Calculus engaging, creative, and relevant to her.

“I’m bad at math, that’s why I love art so much, but I’m in an AP Calculus BC course and I’m doing well in it because my teacher knows how to create an environment where I can learn the way that’s best for me. For example, I made a music video about calculus. Instead of ‘Take me to Church’ by Hozier, [we created a video called] ‘Take me to Calc.’”

Sawyer added that creative learning is not and should not be isolated to the arts, but creative learning should be happening in all fields. “We need creative scientists, we need creative writers, we need creative historians, and we need creative mathematicians.”

3. Technology: Enabler of Human Connections

Matthew Rascoff predicts two categories of technology that will have the biggest impact on the future of education. The first, that he believes is “years off,” is incorporating adaptive learning into education. In this scenario, computers understand the learner’s patterns, make sense of those patterns, and then tailor the experience to exactly what the learner needs at that time.

The second category of edtech which is not years off, but in fact happening right now and will continue to do so, is “using technology as an enabler of better connections among and between people.” It can foster communities of learning so anyone can access and benefit from knowledge about a topic. For example, the Brooklyn ASK app connects curators to the general public in real time. As visitors have questions about an object, they can connect with an expert to share insight and answer their questions.

NYC-028-1024x681
Innovation Studio staff from the Carnegie Museum exploring the Brooklyn Museum’s ASK app. Photo: Drew McDermott, http://studio.carnegiemuseums.org

Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum’s Vice Director of Digital Engagement & Technology, speaks to this exact point in an interview with Nina Simon:

“The pilots showed us visitors were looking for a personal connection with our staff, wanted to talk about the art on view, and wanted that dialogue to be dynamic and speak to their needs directly.”

Echoing Corey’s point earlier – learners can use technology to enhance the human experience and desire for learning.

This discussion was interesting because it focused on themes, ideas, and projections for education as a whole and never got stuck in talking about one ‘type’ of education. In the quotes above and throughout the event, the panelists use the terms ‘educators’ and ‘learners’ interchangeably with ‘student’ and ‘teacher.’ This change in language is one step in the right direction to breaking down silos between educational institutions and organizations. The takeaways are applicable to myriad learning spaces, whether they’re on a college campus, in a museum, community center, or even senior center.

Please share your feedback, comments, or responses on how museums are integral to the future of learning.

Header photo: Courtesy of NC Museum of Art. Christopher Ciccone, photographer

OpenThink

Supporting Leaders of Tomorrow in Museum Education Today

4 Comments

Written by Wendy Ng & Rachel Trinkley

When you’re regularly working 10-hour days doing everything from implementing strategic initiatives to signing timesheets, how do you manage to be a leader in those circumstances?  Ask any exempt staff (1) and they’ll no doubt share stories of being overworked, under-resourced, and despite the best of intentions, feeling overwhelmed and less than effective. Given this reality, beyond your personal conviction and will power to do a good job, what makes a great leader?  What supports do leaders today and tomorrow need to be successful?  What strengths and skills can museum educators bring to leadership roles?

These questions guided an interactive session we led at the National Art Education Association Annual Convention in March 2015.  During the session, colleagues shared the qualities they believe make a great leader.  If you think about a great leader from your own life, you’ll probably recognize many of these same qualities including:

  • has vision
  • is innovative
  • is a great listener
  • speaks the truth
  • is courageous
  • accepts and learns from failure
  • is strategic when fighting battles
  • knows when to follow rather than lead
  • models behavior for staff
  • brings others along and empowers others
  • is a chief storyteller

From there, we split into groups and tackled the top three leadership issues we face, as chosen by those assembled:

  1. developing and supporting staff
  2. institutional culture change
  3. making change at your level

Since we believe in the power of collective minds, and know that there are incredibly smart, capable people in our work, we endeavored to develop solutions or, at least, resources and places to begin. Here’s what we learned…

Developing and Supporting Staff

Build time into our practice, as individuals and as teams, for reflection.  Given the theme of the convention, use Design Thinking to test, prototype, and create solutions as staff through an iterative process.  Books recommended were Coaching Skills for Non-Profit Managers and Leaders and Managing to Change the World.

Institutional Culture/Climate Change

Create interdisciplinary teams and use Design Thinking to create solutions.  Change takes time and is an investment – you’ll need to weather storms and stay more than two to three years at an institution.  It takes courage to run with it, create a space that doesn’t exist, and ask forgiveness later, not permission.  Flip authority within by trusting others with the reins.

Making change at your level

Whether you are a volunteer, intern, part-time staff, full-time staff, or a director, hold yourself to high standards while knowing your limitations.  Modeling change versus talking about change is more impactful.  Awareness of change leads to more collaboration, which leads to growing success and less discouragement, which generates more ideas.  The book Tempered Radicals was recommended.

design-thinking
Design thinking, Flickr photo by Cedim News. CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

As we reflected on the outcomes of that session recently, we realized the values, challenges, solutions all still feel relevant to us. When we talked about our current environments and work realities however, some new questions and challenges emerged:

  • has vision – what if others on your team don’t share that vision?
  • is innovative – what if others define innovation differently?
  • is a great listener – what if others aren’t listening to you?
  • speaks the truth – what if others don’t want to hear it?
  • is courageous – what if your courage backfires?
  • accepts and learns from failure – what if failure negatively impacts your job or career? What if others in your institution don’t value failure?
  • is strategic when fighting battles – when does strategy become political and personality-driven?
  • knows when to follow rather than lead – how do you follow when there’s a lack of trust?
  • models behaviour for staff – what if staff are not receptive?  For example, emerging and mid-career professionals tend to prefer flat rather than hierarchical organizational structures compared to more senior professionals.
  • brings others along and empowers others – what if they disappoint?
  • is a chief storyteller – what if it’s a story others aren’t ready to hear? What if your story is competing for airtime, or there’s no one to hear it?

Perhaps these questions, or similar versions, have emerged in your setting as well, whether quietly or loudly. How do leaders tackle these very real, messy issues? What sources of strength, knowledge, or wisdom can we mine to support both ourselves and others?

We invite your thoughts and responses to these and other questions — add to the Comments below, or share your questions via social media.

*     *     *     *     *

Notes

[1] The U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act determines many employment standards, including who is or is not “exempt” from overtime pay. Many museum workers are exempt from overtime pay due to their work duties.

About the Authors

WENDY NG: Manager, Learning at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, where she oversees School Visits, Traveling Programs, and the Hands-on Galleries.  Previously, Wendy worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario as Coordinator, Elementary School and Teacher Programs, and other museums in Washington, DC and London, England.  She holds a BFA and BEd from York University, a MAT in Museum Education from George Washington University, and is certified by the Ontario College of Teachers.

RACHEL TRINKLEY: Director of Education for Explore! Children’s Museum of Washington DC, a new children’s museum being developed for the nation’s capital. Prior to joining the museum, she worked at the Freer|Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution, and at the Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), where she managed the docent program and served as Assistant Director of Learning. She holds a BA from Saint Mary’s College, Indiana, and an MA in art history from Ohio State University.

*     *     *     *     *

Header Image: PopTech Flickr photo, “2010 PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows,” CC BY-SA 2.0 license, no changes made to photo.

 

Teaching Tools

Announcing New Art History Pedagogy & Practice E-Journal

1 Comment

Written by Virginia Spivey, Contributing Editor at Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR)

Check out the Art History Pedagogy & Practice e-journal hub at Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR), and read the linked White Paper. AHTR is a peer-populated platform for art history teaching content including lesson plans, book reviews, image clusters, and classroom and museum activities. 

Slated to launch in Fall 2016, Art History Pedagogy and Practice is a new academic peer-reviewed journal devoted to pedagogical research in art history.  Inspired by discussions at the College Art Association in 2015 and supported by a Digital Projects Award from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, ArtHistoryTeachingResources.org (AHTR) began this initiative in response to the lack of scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) in the discipline.  The idea was to build on the success of the AHTR Weekly as a popular forum where practitioners already share their experiments and ideas about teaching art history in a range of learning environments.

Over the summer, AHTR worked with the research firm of Randi Korn & Associates to conduct a survey that revealed significant interest in this project.  AHTR is excited about the potential of Art History Pedagogy and Practice to build bridges connecting the traditionally siloed community of academic art historians to others involved in SOTL, museum education and art education at the K-16 level, and the digital humanities.  AHTR recently launched an “e-journal hub” where regular updates will be posted about Art History Pedagogy and Practice, along with information and resources about SOTL and best practices in educational research.  As we move forward in this endeavor, we encourage visitors to visit the site to provide feedback and comments about the project.  

Download White Paper on the Need for a Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Art History (PDF)

White Paper Summary

While art historians in higher education devote extensive amounts of time, effort, and energy to the job of teaching, the attitude persists that this role is separate, or even a distraction, from the primary responsibility to contribute as scholars in the field. Maintaining the duality of teaching and scholarly activity devalues the crucial relationship of pedagogical practice to art historical study, and precludes the potential for research in teaching and learning to have significant impact on the discipline itself.  In order to realize this potential, the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history (SOTH-AH) must be acknowledged as a legitimate area of intellectual inquiry by the institutions and communities encompassing academic art history.  A peer-reviewed journal devoted to SOTL-AH would facilitate this process by providing scholars a space to share research on pedagogical topics, and encourage further academic investigation and discourse around teaching and learning in art history.  

This white paper identifies the need for SOTL-AH based on a recent survey of art historians in higher education and a review of current literature addressing pedagogical topics.  It considers the impact  an academic journal devoted to this topic would have on the art history and related fields that include study of visual and material culture.  As a solution to the lack of SOTL-AH, Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR) began Art History Pedagogy and Practice (AHPP), a peer-reviewed e-journal, that will advance and disseminate academic research on art history’s pedagogy.  This initiative builds on the community and pedagogical inquiry AHTR has developed since its launch in 2011.  AHPP will be housed on Academic Works, CUNY’s Digital Commons repository as an open-access publication that will impose no subscription or contributor fees.   

Stay Tuned

Check the AHPP e-journal hub for updates about the e-journal and to learn more about ways to become involved with Art History Pedagogy & Practice.