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Volunteers at the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston
In 1896, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston used volunteers to give information to the visitors about the museum's vast collection of plaster casts. -
What is a Docent? By J. Randolph Coolidge Jr., as temporary director of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston
"It has been proposed to the Trustees to consider the permanent appointment of one or more persons of intelligence and education who would act as intermediaries between Curators and the many who would be glad to avail themselves of trained instruction in our galleries. Through these docents, as it has been proposed to call them, the heads of departments could instruct many more persons than it would be possible for them to accompany trough the galleries..." More information -
Garrick M. Borden, the first docent
Garrick M. Borden, assistant to the secretary of the MFA and a former university lecturer in art history, was appointed the first docent, charged with the duty of giving visitors in the galleries information about any or all the collections. Docents were asked to instruct in an unimposing way. Benjamin Ives Gilman (secretary of the MFA) suggested that docents start not from their interests, but from mutual interest. determined by the wish of the majority. More information -
The American Association of Museums recognises the need of sessions on education
In 1915, the Metropolitan invited museum instructors from the eastern part of the USA to a conference on their common aims and problems. A committee was appointed to form an association for the purpose of improving methods of teaching, raising aims of the work, marking out lines of progression, and emphasizing the general importance of the profession. Although the association was never formed, the AAM recognized the need, and promised the instructors a session at each of its conventions. -
aesthetic experience versus historical approach in the USA
The tension between an approach based on the power of art to speak directly to viewers through their perceptions on the object itself and a historical approach based on the object's context was relieved by a commonly shared idea that the artist's intentions were discoverable in the work of art itself. The differences between the ways in which formalist and historically minded theorists described the task of determining an artist's intentions reflect the complexities inherent in the task itself. -
The Education Act in United Kingdom meets resistance
Museums resisted the recommendations in the 1918 Education Act that they should contribute to government’s objectives for
children’s learning, and this signalled a shift away from museums being driven by public education at their core. More information -
"Museums are not educational institutions"
In 1920, a delegation from the Museums Association told the Board of Education that ‘museums are not fundamentally educational institutions’. United Kingdom -
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Progressivism and the expansion of programmes
In the 1920s and the 1930s, private foundations as well as the federal government began to provide support for museums, including museum education programs. The number of people engaged in museum teaching grew as the practice spread to more museums. -
Pioneers in museum education. Musées Royaux d'Art et D'Histoire in Brussels
In Bruxelles, after a trip to the United States of America in 1922, the egyptologist Jean Capart defines the double function that in his opinion, a museum should have: the scientific view, a research to the interior ; and the opening to the outside and communication. From the beginning, at the Musée Royal d'Art et d'Histoire, the curators were involved in guided tours in which the objects were not considered from the same point of view but considered the result of a human creation. -
The Meaning of Adult Education
Influenced by the writings of John Dewey, the educator Eduard C. Lindeman launched a wave of new thinking with the publication of 'The Meaning of Adult Education' in th USA in 1926. His conception of adult education was "a cooperative venture in nonauthoritarian, informal learning." More information -
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Children on the spot in the USA
By the late 1930, the work of the education departments in major museums increasingly centered around children. In school and adult programs, museums began to reflect progressive ideas. For the Progressive Education and Child Study movements of the period, the arts offered fertile grounds for "creative development". With teachers arguing that creative self-expression in children was inhibited by instructon in art appreciation, the latter virtually disappeared from most schools. -
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Victor D'Amico
Art classes had long been traditional offerings in museums but they became increasingly important, as creative activity came to rival art as the favored approach to appreciation. For Victor D'Amico, head of the Museum of Modern Art's education department and perhaps the single most influential museum educator of its generation, studio classes were the heart of museum education. "When people know about how to create," he said, "they respect other's creativity." More information -
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World War II
World War II put the aesthetic ideal to a sharp test. The war provoked a flood of reflection on the nature and direction of human civilization, including many discussions of the patriotic obligation of museums to make clear values on which Western civilization is based.Museum gallery conversations would meet two goals: the facilitation of discussions of values, but also the provision of psychological solace for people suffering from anxieties generated during wartime. -
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Docent's training in the USA
Training people to work as museum educators continued to be the subject of lively debate in the 1940s. Andrew C. Ritchie, director of the Albright Gallery, wrote that "the requirements for a good museum docent are very bit as rigorous as those for a research worker or a college teacher." In a 1940 study commissioned by the AAM, Theodore Low remarked, "The fact is that is no course on museum work in the country which offers a person satisfactory training in the peculiarities of museum teaching." -
Should one educate or inform?
In 1947 Charles Slatkin could still ask, "How much should one lecture; how much discuss; query? Should one educate or inform; elicit information or submerge the listener in a flow of words? Shall one aim for a moment's escape, a vision of man's unfettered genious, a sermon on mortality, the mysteries of creative process, the enduringness of art, the elements of conaisseurship?" -
The Tokyo National Museum creates the Activities Department
In 1947, The National Museum incorporated the National Treasures Research Section, the National Treasures Conservation Section, and the Fine Art Research Institute of the Ministry of Education.
As a result, the organizations of the National Museum were classified into 6 departments (Display, Activities, Research, Conservation, Reference Materials, and Management) and a subordinate Research Institute. -
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Experiments in programming in the USA
In the 1950's, museum educators at many museums experimented with various forms of discussion in gallery teaching. The MFA in Boston tried a variation of the gallery talk, called Gallery Discussion, led by two instructors, of a subject chosen by its "controversial" nature. At the Art Institute of Chicago, perhaps in response to the excitement generated by Katherine Khu's experiments in the Art Institute's Gallery of Art Interpretation, iniciated a number of gallery talks and discussions. -
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Volunteers in the USA
Museum attendance increased rapidly in the 1950s. The use of volunteers to teach children in museums spread. The use of volunteers, however, met some resistance. In a 1953 issue of the Circular on Museum Education dedicated to "Volunteer and Part-Time Workers", only three of the thirteen education departments contributing opinions advocated using volunteers to instruct students.Almost all art museums in the United States would eventually come to use volunteer docents to instruct visitors. -
Pioneers in Art Education. Victoria & Albert Museum
In London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, devoted to the British design, started a renovation of the museum that had first opened in 1852. The main goal was the stimulation of British designers and manufacturers so that the audience at large could discover the quality of the artists: either historical or contemporary. -
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Museums spread and volunteerism in the USA
n the 1960's, new museums were springing up everywhere, and the AAM reported booming public attendance. One of the ways that American museums coped with the growing audiences was to rely more on volunteers in their education programs. Although the common opinion in the 1960's in larger museums was that the volunteer was a "pest and nuisance and the fewer the volunteers the better the museum", smaller museums believed they could not survive without them. -
The Belmont Report
The America's Museums: The Belmont Report, was commissioned by the federal government and published by the American Association of Museums (AAM). The Belmont Report was tied to the tax Reform Act of 1969 that enabled government support for public institutions whose mission was declared as educational. This historical event provided a finantial incentive for museums to turn their attention to educational pursuits through changes in policy and practice to secure much-needed government funding. -
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Experience of objects versus historical undestanding in the USA
Many education departments replaced the traditional lecture tour with activities devised to encourage participation, discovery, and the stimulation of children's natural curiosity. What educators seem to agree upon was that teaching students to see did not mean looking ar art historically. Criticism of the "sensitivity"movement in museum education was not slow to come. -
Credo for Museum Education: social relevance
A committee of art museum educators meeting at a 1972 conference in Cleveland, Ohio, drafted a "Credo for Museum Education", stating that museums were obligued to serve "the broadest portion of society within its capabilities."
Museums were changing not only under the preassure of increased attendance but also under the pressures exerted by a changing culture. Inspired -or perhaps intimidated- by the activism of the period, museums became concerned with their social relevance. -
Museum Nacional d'Art de Catalunya starts researching in education
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (1973) starts researching in education. Spain -
Creation of the Committee for Education and Cultural Action, CECA
In 1974 the ICOM (International Council of Museums) officially created the Committee for Education and Cultural Action, CECA, because of the purpose of making education and communication fundamental functions in museums. -
Museo de Arte Moderno de Barcelona starts researching in education
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Foundation of GREM
In 1978, Guy Vadeboncoeur, curator in the Musée Stewart de Fort in the Saint Eleine island, asked for educative services. But this time the activities he requested had to be adapted to the school curriculum, unlike the other activities previously done in museums, that consisted on visits to celebrate the end of the school year as a compensation for the students for the hardwork. To develop these activities, the GREM, Groupe de recherche sur l'éducation et les musées, was created. Canada -
The Art Museum as Educator
In 1978, supported by a grant from NEA, the Council on Museum and Education in the Visual Arts published a telephone book-size compendium entitled The Art Museum as Educator, the first comprehensive attempt to document museum education programs in the United States. The book devoted about 250 pages to "The Art Museum and the Young, Their Teachers, and Their Schools". The study cited encouraging signs of change, toward an "emphasis on direct involvement, on personal discovery, on creative activit -
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Object-oriented learning in museums in the USA
The 1970s had ended with a challenge, framed in terms of the question of the right relation between the twin goals of intense, personal experiences of objects and learning about them, and Patterson Williams (director of education at the Denver Art Museum) addressed that question with her theory of "object-oriented learing in museums". -
The first museum education department in Spain
The first Museum Education Department started working in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia (1981). Spain -
Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE)
When in 1982, the J. Paul Getty Trust established a center for education in the arts, it gave substantial support to discipline-based art education (DBAE), comprising the disciplines of art history, art criticism, aesthetics, and art practice. With the support of the Getty Trust, DBAE quickly became the most prominent approach in the field of art education, expanding to museums as well as classrooms. -
Museums for a New Century
n 1984, The Commission for Museums for a New Century (AAM), published a report that stated that education was mandated as overt mission of museums. The Commission emphasized the need for research on teaching and learning in museums and the critical importance of building school-museum partnerships. The publication included an assessment of US museums' relationships to the community and society, an evaluation of existing policies and operations, and a prognosis. (USA) -
Spain unifies the name of the education departments as DEACs
Logically, not all of education departments had the same evolution and their methodologies and goals were different. Not even their names were the same: from "pedagogical department", "communication area", "cultural diffusion department", "didactic department" or "didactic cabinet". It wasn't until 1985 when the name was unified as "Departamentos de Educación y Acción Cultural" (DEAC), that comes from Committee for Education and Cultural Action, CECA, notion given by the ICOM. Spain -
The Uncertain Profession
Elliot Eisner and Stephen Dobbs, professors of art and art education, published in 1986 The Uncertain Profession: Observations on the State of Museum Education in Twenty American Art Museums. The report presented a highly unflattering portrait of a profession uncertain of its own intellectual foundations and characterized by "a lack of consensus regarding the basic aims of museum education." More Information -
The Denver Meeting
The Denver Meeting brought together a group of twenty-five art museum educators, including the elected officers of two professional organizations, the Education Committee of the AAM and the Museum Division of the National Art Education Association (NAEA), groups that had not before worked together or met jointly. The group dedicated itself to fashioning a definition of museum education and defining issues that would be central to the field's future. More Information -
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Visual Thinking Strategies
In the early 1990s, Yenawine and Housen collaborated on the creation of a sequential curriculum for classroom teachers to introduce discussion of works of art to their students. Their curriculum developed into an approach called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), which became steadily more and more widely adopted, in museums as well as classroom. The literature of VTS advised educators never to be the source of information. -
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One in five museums had educators in United Kingdom
In the early 1990s, only half of museums made any provision for education, and only one in five had an education specialist on its staff. United Kingdom -
Not ready to do away with the facts
The publication of the Getty Center for Education in the Arts and the J. Paul Getty Museum found generally that "information increases appreciation of the art. The more visitors know about a particular object and its background, the greater their connection with it. As the authors of The Handbook of the 1991 National Docent Symposium remarked, personal experiences and information are not mutually exclusive: "They go hand in hand to create meaning for visitors." -
Excellence and Equity
In 1992, the AAM published a landmark document entitled Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums. This report was developed by an AAM task force that examined the educational role of museums and proposed strategies for furthering museums' educational mission. More Information -
Foundation of GISEM. Canada
In 1993, in a meeting in the Carletton University of Ottawa, a group of researchers coming from different universities of Canada, founded the Groupe d’intérêt spécialisé en éducation muséale (GISEM). Canada -
A Common Wealth
In 1997, David Anderson’s milestone report A Common Wealth revealed that most museum managers regarded education as a second-order priority after collections management and display. -
Kunstcoop foundation
Thanks to a seminar organized by Carmen Mörsch, a group of women concerned with mediation issues start working as a collective. In 2000, their project was part of the program of the NGBK. They had several confrontations with the curators they worked with. Kuntscoop was accused of offering a watered-down version of the curators' discourses. This issue made the collective change their position. They became more visitor-centered and less institution-bounded. -
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The educational turn
Museums and government have taken museums’ learning and education role increasingly seriously. Museums, which took the initiative and were innovators in this respect, have been aided, enabled and supported by government initiatives and funding, such as the Museums and Galleries Education Programme, Renaissance in the Regions, Strategic Commissioning, and Creative Partnerships. -
Mastering Civic Engagement
In 2002, the AAM published Mastering Civic Engagement. This publication discussed the relationships between museums, education, society, and commerce. Civic engagement called for rethinking and restrucuring collaboration; cultivating endowments and funding; emphasizing researching, teaching and public commitment; responding and engaging in conversations in and out of the museum community; and testing creative solutions for public programming that fosters lifelong learning for the society. -
The MLA creates ILFA
In March 2004, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council launched a programme to make museums, libraries and archives central to the development of education.
Inspiring Learning for All is supported by a web-based resource -www.inspiringlearningforall.gov.uk- that enables settings to review and develop learning activities based on a framework of best practice and measure their impact on learners. It aims to take institutions through a fundamental culture change, making learning a core function -
Manifesto for Museums
By 2004, a group representing all the major museums in the UK published their Manifesto for Museums that could argue that ‘the educational role of museums lies at the core of our service to the public’. More Information -
Renaissance Hub
In parallel with the increased learning activity for young people and adults, there has been more interest in learning about learning – understanding how it works, researching what are the most successful pedagogic approaches, discovering how museums can learn among each other. A number of reports from funding bodies (in particular MLA and NMDC), University departments (Leicester and City University) and the think tank Demos have provided research, analysis, challenge and advocacy. -
Curators-educators
In United Kingdom, the divide between learning and curatorial functions has begun to narrow. A Common Wealth found that in 1994 only 11 per cent of museum staff contributed to education, whereas Museum Learning reported in 2006 that 87 per cent of curators were involved with learning, with 13 per cent spending more than a quarter of their time on it. These figures may be partly explained by a changing attitude on the part of curators, but they must also reflect changing practice itself. -
Strategic Commissioning
Strategic Commissioning has enabled non-hub museums to increase their capacity to respond to increasing demand on the part of schools, through brokering partnerships between museums and schools. -
Museum Education Funding
In recent years, thanks to the national lottery and substantial contributions from private donors, notably the Clore Duffield and Sackler Foundations, the infrastructure that supports learning in museums has improved both in quantity and quality. In 2008 77 per cent of museums had dedicated educational facilities and 55 per cent a specific education room compared with only 34 per cent in 1994. The Clore Duffield Foundation has provided education spaces at many museums and galleries,
