The U.S. Department of Education will host the artworks of students from 15 major art museums’ education programs at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Museums: pARTners in Learning on Tuesday, May 15 at the Education Department. The exhibit features 40 artworks created by K-12 students using a variety of media and highlights museum programs working in partnership with local schools to blend arts education with learning in several other subjects. The exhibit includes descriptions of the programs in which the works were created along with a cell phone guided tour that will enable visitors to hear students talking about their museum experience and the artwork. The exhibit is available online at www.aamd.org/partnersinlearning2012.
Karen Gross, senior policy advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary, will deliver opening remarks, and Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, will give the keynote address. Additional speakers will include Dorothy Kosinski, director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and Adam Robinson, art teacher at the Takoma Education Campus in Washington, D.C., plus students from the Takoma Education Center in northwest Washington, D.C.
In addition, Takoma middle school students will provide a Go-Go drum performance; students from D.C.’s Tyler Elementary School will give a theater performance; and Jackie M, director of education and public programs at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., will present an Object-based Learning Strategies Demonstration.
The exhibit is sponsored by the Association of Art Museum Directors, whose 200 members serve more than 40,000 public, private, charter, and home schools a year, with programs ranging from single-visit tours to intensive, long-term partnerships that include shared teaching, curriculum design, assessment, and professional development.
The Department’s Student Art Exhibit Program, now in its ninth year, features visual art created by students in U.S. and international schools, and provides students and teachers an opportunity to display creative work from the classroom in a highly public space that honors their work as an effective path to learning and knowledge for all.