Next Practices

Next Practices in Art Museum Education Resource Guide It gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce AAMD’s first edition of “Next Practices in Art Museum Education.” Intended to take us beyond proven “best practices,” this publication is meant to both share and spark new ideas and innovation. I hope that it also provides practical information on how museums start, support, and evaluate such programs. When this project began, we thought of choosing a representative sample of programs submitted by AAMD members. As it progressed, however, and as we saw the range and variety of what’s happening in museums across North America, it seemed only right to share as many and as widely as possible. This publication, therefore, includes all 100 submissions, covering interactions between a given audience and museum staff, whether on-site or off and whether virtual or physical. This Resource Guide, exclusively available to AAMD members, also includes practical details on each program, from sources of funding to forms of evaluation. I hope you find it interesting, useful, and inspirational! Lori Fogarty Chair, AAMD Education & Community Issues Committee Director, Oakland Museum of California Next Practices in Art Museum Education • Resource Guide 2 Albright-Knox Art Gallery New Digital Resources: Tiki-Toki Timelines and Historypin Walking Tours he Albright-Knox Art Gallery has launched a series of education and exploration resources related T to its institutional history and its various collections. The resources include six timelines created using the web platform Tiki-Toki and two walking tours created using the web and mobile platform Historypin. Tiki-Toki is web-based software used to create beautiful, interactive timelines. Integrated with Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo, it allows users to tell multimedia stories and visualize a series of events. The museum began this project by re-creating an illustrated timeline that was recently published in an exhibition catalogue celebrating the Gallery’s 150 years of collecting. The Resources for Education timeline, sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, and its successful Art’scool program at the Albright-Knox, provides a chronological overview of the rich lesson plans and interpretive content available on the museum’s website. This timeline will help educators more easily find content from a specific time period to integrate into their own classroom curriculum. It also serves as a great exploration tool for anyone interested in learning more about the museum’s collection and educational materials. The Visionary Collecting: 150 Years in the Making timeline, which explores the history of the museum and its major benefactors, was originally developed by Curator for the Collection, Holly E. Hughes, for the 2011 exhibition catalogue The Long Curve: 150 Years of Visionary Collecting at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The Directors of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery timeline details the key contributions made by each of the gallery’s directors from 1905 to the present, while three additional timelines provide a comprehensive history of the museum’s past exhibitions, from its founding in 1862 to the present. In addition to the Tiki-Toki timelines, the Albright-Knox has also launched two Historypin walking tours, focused on the museum’s outdoor sculptures and the architecture that exists throughout the City of Buffalo. Historypin, which is often referred to as a digital time machine, is a website and smartphone application that allows audiences to view, experience, and share history in a new way. This digital resource allows users to “pin” historical photographs, audio, and video files to geographic locations, keyed by their dates. Historypin currently has more than 300,000 assets and recollections pinned. This user-generated archive encourages individuals to participate in creating a retrospective view of modern- day cities. The website allows users to overlay historic images onto their contemporary location, creating a “then and now” effect. The gallery’s Historypin channel, which now offers five collections and two walking tours, can be explored online and through the Historypin smart phone application. The Outdoor Sculpture at the Albright-Knox walking tour allows participants using the mobile app on supported device, to explore photographs and related content about each of the outdoor sculptures currently installed on the museum’s campus, such as Jason Middlebrook’s Underlife, 2012–13, which was completed just this fall. Historypin app users can also superimpose an image of a sculpture over their current view of the work to see other works previously installed in the location, how the work may have changed over the years, and how it looks in different seasons. A tour of Buffalo architecture, inspired by the museum’s 1940 photography exhibition Buffalo Architecture, 1816–1940, is also available on the Albright-Knox’s Historypin channel. Next Practices in Art Museum Education • Resource Guide 3 Program Audience: New online and smart phone—optimized educational resources for all audiences Why was this program developed? These programs were developed to make all of the museum’s collections—not only the fine art collection—available to a wider, global audience for viewing and further study; to provide ready, easy access to educational materials, not only for educators and students, but also for the general public; to provide new tools allowing educators to integrate works from the museum’s Collection into their lesson plans in diverse curriculum areas; and to celebrate the museum’s 150-year history. Number of participants served in individual sessions: There is no limit to the number of participants who can be served at one time with these digital educational resources. Number of participants served annually: There is no limit to the number of participants who can be served at one time with these digital educational resources. When did this program begin operation? The Albright-Knox Art Gallery created a channel on Historypin in 2010 and created its first timeline using Tiki-Toki in 2011. Both of these new digital educational resources were shared with the public in late October 2013. Start-up costs: Both of these educational and exploration resources are free, open-source tools to a degree. Their use does require an investment of staff time, as well as various technology-related resources. In order to create multiple timelines using Tiki-Toki, a user is required to pay a modest monthly membership fee, which varies with the level of membership. Ongoing costs: The ongoing costs include a continuing institutional investment of staff hours and technology resources. Tiki-Toki continues to require a modest monthly membership fee based on the number of timelines created. Source(s) of funding (both start-up and ongoing): There was no specific funding source for these tools. Their costs were covered by the operational budget of the museum’s overall digital strategy initiatives. Form of evaluation: These tools were first shared with the public in late October 2013, and the museum is currently allowing time for audiences to engage with and use these new resources. Over the next several months—following this period of initial engagement—the museum will review and evaluate the tools. Is your program a model of another program or an original? Other institutions use these or similar online tools to share digital content, but the way the Albright-Knox has adapted these resources for its purposes is original and innovative. Have you changed your organizational structure to respond to changing education needs inside or outside your institution? The museum’s overall organizational structure has not changed in response to these changing education needs, but at the operational level, we have developed a Digital Strategy Group, a cross-departmental team that strategizes, implements, and oversees all aspects of the museum’s digital and social media platforms. Staff Contact: Kelly Carpenter, Digital Media Manager, [email protected] Next Practices in Art Museum Education • Resource Guide 4 The Andy Warhol Museum Dine and Discuss ine and Discuss is an after-school teen program at The Andy Warhol Museum, which empowers D young people to place dialogue at the center of the table. A group of teens meet one day per week for two hours, over the course of six weeks, and develop an art happening in response to an exhibit at the museum. The happenings materialize as dinner parties fully designed and facilitated by the teens; they curate the food, the guest list, the aesthetic, and the dialogue—all in response to the central exhibit. Dine and Discuss embraces food, art, and inquiry as a site for teen-led community building. Program Audience: Teen Why was this program developed? In 2011, The Warhol education staff was looking for new ways to get teens involved in some of the more challenging exhibitions at the museum. After brainstorming with a think tank of teens, we located their lunch table as a major site for dialogue. So in turn, we proposed a dinner party in the galleries at the Warhol, that we Dine and Discuss. For the pilot, we recruited six teens to meet weekly for a month and half. We spent our time in the gallery examining the work and unpacking what questions it provoked for the group. Lead staff member Adil Mansoor deliberately presented a variety of techniques to get conversations flowing, and the group reflected on which methods worked better than others. We observed conversations led by the teens and created space for feedback. The students designed the look and feel for the evening, developed a conceptual menu, and prepared the conversation prompts they would facilitate all inspired by the exhibit. Each leader also invited other teens as guests who had agency in the conversation at hand. The dinners ignited the creative potential of teens and embraced dialogue as a catalyst for speaking across difference.

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