The U.S. Department of Education and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) will present Museums: pARTners in Learning 2015,with an opening program and ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Department’s headquarters at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, May 12. The exhibit features student art by k–12 students who participated in museum education programs organized by art museums in their communities. The exhibition showcases the students’ remarkable achievements and underscores the wide range of interdisciplinary skills students can acquire through arts education, as well as how direct engagement with the arts supports student learning and personal growth.
Jamienne Studley, deputy under secretary of education at the Department of Education, and Johnnetta Cole, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and incoming president of AAMD, will deliver opening remarks. The opening will feature a presentation from students and teachers from Kenmore Middle School in Arlington, Va., and a discussion with museum educators about the importance of arts integration and community engagement in learning for the 21st century and college readiness. Yuliya Kosheeva, a 10th-grader, also will speak about her experience in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Saturday Sketching for Teens program. Audience members will participate in an art-math exercise to co-create an art piece.
The exhibit will be on display at the Department of Education through June 2015. The museums participating in the exhibit are Boise Art Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Denver Art Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Joslyn Art Museum, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Phillips Collection, Princeton University Art Museum, and Toledo Museum of Art.
The Department’s Student Art Exhibit Program, now in its 13th year, features visual and performing arts 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 place that honors their work as an effective path to learning and knowledge for all.