Artist Jo Dacombe remembers a school residency when she was working as an Associate Artist at Nottingham Contemporary, a large contemporary arts centre. Through the residency, she worked with a group of primary children of mixed ages to explore themes from the exhibition Rights of Nature. She describes the experience for the children, the nature…

As art museums increasingly commit to socially engaged practices that require critical ways of engaging with artworks, collaborators, and visitors, what does gallery educators' ongoing learning look like, and what motivates it? How does it inform or respond to change? Drawing on research with freelance gallery educators in Scotland, this article…

This case study examines a workshop utilizing visual art-based methodologies to support second-year medical students in their transition into clerkship. Through a series of three activities, art educators and medical faculty collaborated to facilitate student reflection on this pivotal academic transition. The workshop created a reflective space…

The Federal Arts Project (WPA-FAP) (1935-1943) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a federally funded program designed through Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to keep visual artists at work during the Great Depression. Many of these arts programs took place through museums and exhibitions, bringing the visual arts to everyday Americans…

This paper charts an on-going process emerging from a collaborative project between Manchester Art Gallery, and early childhood researchers and practitioners, who are currently working together to develop a new learning space for families. It revolves around the potential of exhibiting a collection of bonbonnieres in this space. These little 18th…

This time of accentuated interdependence and acute awareness of a historical moment calls on galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) to respond together and to lead forward. Memory institutions are unique trusted stewards of time. When humanity experiences a global event such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, these institutions are…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented changes to the museum field in 2020. Significant among these changes are losses in museum education. Using data collected from museum educators and museum directors, the authors document and contextualize what they consider incongruous, detrimental impacts on museum education. Most troubling, when…

The art of looking is a museum and art gallery teaching tool at the core of the Visual Thinking Strategies, a Harvard School of Education pedagogy initiated as an educational experiment for schools across the United States almost two decades ago. Today, a large number of schools implement this teaching method to increase student engagement in a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a new era where applied learning has to go virtual. This hastened the need for students to be equipped with virtual skillsets, including the ability to manage 3-D augmented reality tools for future work. This paper introduces the virtual art platform as a means to prepare students for the new world, which requires…

In the early 1950s television was the hot new broadcast media. The post-war economic boom meant that more and more American households were purchasing televisions, and television programming was growing to meet demand. The moment was rife with the potential to reach more and more people through the dazzling allure of television. Many American…

The 2015 passing of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to replace No Child Left Behind was celebrated within the arts community (Arts Education Partnership, 2017; National Art Education Association, 2017; Walker, 2016) for embracing a "well-rounded education" that explicitly includes the arts in its definition (ESSA, 2015, p. 298). In…

In order better to support children's learning experiences, art museums have begun to establish interactive art exhibitions designed for family visitors. However, as more of these interactive exhibitions are established, some museum professionals are raising concerns about whether these exhibitions actually facilitate young visitors' learning or…

At a time of widespread concern over the decline of art teaching in schools, this article considers the findings of a practitioner led action research project exploring the potential of art museum and artist-led CPD (Continued Professional Development) programmes to develop primary teacher knowledge, skills and confidence teaching in art and…

Portrait therapy entails an art therapist co-creating portraits of patients diagnosed with life-limiting illnesses and exhibiting it in a museum art gallery. A description of portrait therapy practice draws on the portraits, collages, and prose poems of two patients, along with feedback from exhibition visitors and patients' families. For…

Open-ended guided tours and choices on tours have become more common in art museums as educational and curatorial practices focus on visitor-centered experiences. What can museums do to help set the stage for these types of interactions between visitors, the museum, and works of art through programming and tours? In this article, the author…