Art Museum Education
Visitor Promise and Guidelines, The Walters Art Museum
Visitor Promise
Welcome to your Walters Art Museum. Our mission is to bring art and people together for enjoyment, discovery, and learning.
We strive to:
Maintain the museum as a free, welcoming, and accessible environment for all people.
Preserve and share the works of art and buildings in our care for future generations.
Create a partnership of mutual respect, active listening, and open dialogue with our community.
Thank you for your participation and support.
Behaviors that interfere with these goals are not permitted in the museum, including but not limited to: behaviors that harass, abuse, or endanger museum visitors, staff, or volunteers, including discriminatory language or conduct; behaviors that endanger the art, buildings, or grounds; or behaviors that impede the experience of others. Museum staff will ask any individual who engages in these behaviors to leave museum property.
The Future of Learning
Resources for Art Museum and Medical School Partnerships
“Medical students, interns, residents, and fellows are taught to look at works of art and in turn relate these skills to their own professional practices. By doing so, they develop observation, interpretation, empathy, and collaboration skills in order to enhance their clinical diagnosis and practices.
The following resources have been collected from participants in the field.”
Decolonizing the Art Museum
Museums have long considered themselves above the fray of the political. But the past 18 months have brought unexpected challenges, and leaders across the country are being confronted with an urgent question: How do museums reconceive their missions at a time of great societal reckoning around race and gender, and as more diverse audiences demand a voice and a sense of accountability?
Museums as Safe Spaces or Comfort Zones
“And as museums open up for participation around collections, documentation, program activities and exhibitions, a key ingredient is trust. With trust contribution, collaboration and co-creation is possible. If museums are perceived as safe spaces for contribution and collaboration, if the audience trusts the museum, it is possible to achieve real social impact in society.”
https://medium.com/@kajsahartig/museums-as-safe-spaces-or-comfort-zones-some-thoughts-37aaaad0b535
Decolonizing the Art Museum: The Next Wave
“Art can illuminate the fissures in society and in return offer opportunities for healing. But should artists be the only ones to bear the brunt of this responsibility? If museums want to continue to have a place, they must stop seeing activists as antagonists. They must position themselves as learning communities, not impenetrable centers of self-validating authority.”
By Olga Viso—Ms. Viso is an independent curator and museum consultant, and a former museum director.
NAEA Convention Proposal Development
A handy dandy guide to writing a successful NAEA conference proposal:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JXEGfLAOW4UgnEr2t3wjeUnfeZSBHzdJfvkAcUdwGg8/edit#slide=id.g35f391192_00
When Contemporary Art Feels Too Inaccessible
A Museum Manifesto for a More Equitable Future
A Museum Manifesto for a More Equitable Future
May 1, 2018
“The museum sector often thinks about equity in terms of access to exhibits and educational programs. There is also a robust and growing movement to make museums’ digital assets, including documentation and images of collections, open and accessible. But museums also control immensely powerful intangible assets: notably reputation, reach, and networks of influence. I’m developing a workshop to help museums figure out how to use their assets, tangible and intangible, to redress inequities in their communities. By sharing the rough outline of this work in this post I hope to solicit your input, and your help in identifying potential partners, hosts, funders, and participants in this work.
One of the biggest challenges facing the United States today is wealth inequality. One percent of the population now holds well over a third of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 90% holds less than a quarter. This inequality in wealth is part of a pernicious feedback loop of inequity in education, housing, our legal system, job opportunities, health care, political power to name a few. In addition to being a social justice issue in and of itself, economists, historians and policy experts warn that escalating inequality can lead to social and economic instability and some feel it poses a significant threat to our democratic system. I believe there is a huge opportunity for museums to prove their value to society, and tap new sources of support, by taking that second road.”