Arts educators, college professors, students and higher ed administrators alike gathered Wednesday and Thursday at the City University of New York’s Baruch College for an intensive look at how arts education can be bolstered with outside organizations during the conference, “Museums and Higher Education in the 21st Century: Collaborative Methods and Models for Innovation.” The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City co-hosted the event, which opened with a reception and tour of its space in the Meat-packing District on Wednesday night and closed after a day’s worth of presentations on Thursday at the school.
For the “Museum Education and the University Student Experience” panel, Leonie Hannan, a teaching fellow in the Museum Department at the University College London, delineated how experiential learning with museum objects can make a huge impact on students across disciplines—whether in science, fine arts, music or dance. With tuition hikes across the board, she said, “There’s been an awful lot of chatter of improving the student experience, because they are customers as well. Teaching methods, especially at research institutions, are coming more closely into focus. There is still a strong tradition of lectures, but there are themes of active learning being recognized, especially by our youngest staff coming through. There is a bit of a tussle going on here, but in the end we’ll find that you need a little bit of both.”
Data collected at her overseas college in 2011 pointed to increased teamwork and engagement among pupils; however, students indicated that a combination of interactive learning and traditional-style lessons was most effective in subject-specific courses.
Marcie Karp, managing museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then took the podium for a look at how the Met’s internship program is working with college students and the greater community to bolster arts education.
“If museums do nothing else, they’re going to create inspired museum educators,” she told Diverse prior to her presentation. “The Metropolitan Museum’s Teaching Corps Internship Program provides a unique gateway—it’s where our interns who are college and graduate students discover their passion and incorporate it into their teaching methodology.”
Whether it’s teaching local teens and K-12 students about art or creating lessons based on their favorite objects from the Met’s vast holdings, interns receive a rich experience that Karp said they go on to translate into many different fields.
