Search

After years of courting public audiences, academic art museums have shifted their focus back to their campus constituents. These changes have meant putting a premium on attracting and engaging university students. Museums have been successful in doing so through classes. Yet, what about students as active constituents outside of class? Students' limited free time is one hurdle in engaging students outside of class, but students must know about their campus art museum and its programs before they can decide whether to attend or not. Therefore a study of the challenges, and successes, in marketing these museums and their programming to students was undertaken. Specifically, 29 campus art museums in the United States were surveyed on their relationship with students, current marketing strategies, what types of media are used, and how these forms of media are evaluated. Survey results revealed challenges of limited staff time and the lack of an analytical framework for some marketing materials. Successes in marketing to students were limited, but positive comments and feedback from respondents exhibit several best practices for marketing to students. These include enlisting the help of trusted resources around campus, creating positive word of mouth among the student body, and engaging students in both the creation and marketing of programs. Additionally, best practices from civic museums, and reports on marketing to student-aged individuals, were drawn on in order to offer prescriptive advice.

Using the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) in Columbus, Ohio as a case study, this thesis explores how American art museums can position themselves to become more diverse and inclusive institutions. The research comes at a critical moment when discussions concerning diversity, inclusion, equity, and accessibility are mounting in the museum field, the United States is consistently confronting problems with intolerance surrounding difference, and the nation’s minority population is growing exponentially. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with staff members and volunteers associated with the CMA and the analysis of privately and publicly available documents. By examining the CMA’s initiatives, relationships, and organizational priorities, four findings emerged: the visitor-centered focus of the museum positions the institution to better address diversity and inclusion work, the museum operates as an open system that leads to collaboration and innovation, the museum’s emphasis on community relationships results in increased inclusion and diverse perspectives, and the museum provides varied programming that aims to serve a diverse audience. Based on the findings, this study concludes that museums striving to make a commitment to diversity and inclusion should consider operating as an open museum system with a visitor-centered focus and an emphasis on community relationships, as it may enhance diversity and inclusion work. The study also provides recommendations for improved diversity and inclusion work at art museums across the country.

This Thesis looks at art education as a tool for meaningful art museum experiences. The study follows students on field trips at the High Art Museum as a process to develop a fully inclusive art educational program. The focus of the process of inclusivity evaluates the personal, socio-cultural, and physical aspects of the learning environment within the museum. The research questions that guide the study are 1) how the inclusive strategies I have found in my art classroom can be utilized to create an inclusive art museum setting, 2) how we can approach inclusive student learning an art museum environment, and 3) how the art museum field trip experience can be designed to create an engaging and worthwhile experience for students on the autism spectrum. This study offers a model of inclusion to an artistic learning environment.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the considerations made by educators when bringing students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) into an art museum setting. This action research study investigated why special education teachers are not taking their students to art museums, and carried out the process of planning and going on a field trip to a contemporary art museum with a class of children with ASD. In this study, I collaborated with a special education teacher from a school in Austin, Texas to prepare her class of 7-9 year olds for a trip to The Contemporary Austin. I also explored the role of museum educators, examining the methods that docents use to engage special needs audiences and the benefits of a museum field trip for visitors with ASD from the perspective of an educator at The Contemporary Austin.

Using Simon Sinek’s `Golden Circles’ framework, this study begins by identifying what a hub for creative engagement is—a space that provides opportunities for visitors to foster creativity through participatory engagement. This study then explores how large regional art museums implement hubs for creative engagement. Using the Wonderkamers in the Gemeentemuseum in the Netherlands and the Center for Creativity in the Columbus Museum of Art in the United States as case studies, this study relies on a mixed-methods approach of synthesizing publicly available sources, curator interviews, and participant observations to understand how these spaces impact visitor creativity and visitor engagement. Participant observations reveal that visitors of all ages are attracted to hubs for creative engagement, that visitors are more likely to choose participatory over passive engagement when given the option, and—per Stuart Brown’s (2010) typology of play—that social, creative, and object play occur most frequently when they participate. By comparing these findings to the curators’ intentions for these spaces, this study also reveals how effectively these hubs for creative engagement meet their intended goals. Finally, this study finds that creativity and innovation are understood in largely the same way in both the United States and the Netherlands, making hubs for creative engagement an asset for art museums in more than one region of the world. Consequently, this study provides a framework for how to implement a hub for creative engagement that can be utilized by any applicable art museum.

This case study focused on the 2016 Summer Teacher Institute at the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas. The workshop intended to present an interdisciplinary professional development program to participating teachers from various disciplines, grounding non-art concepts with works of art. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the program by examining the events of the workshop within a framework of experiential and social learning theory, reviewing anonymous teacher feedback, and through interviews with the museum educator leading the program and one participating teacher. The workshop’s adherence to the theoretical framework, its fulfillment of the museum educator’s objectives, and the teacher’s consideration of how likely she would be to use skills and strategies learned in the workshop in her classroom were the elements determining the workshop’s success. Through analysis of other interdisciplinary professional development programs and direct communication with the involved educators, this study offers information other institutions may consider when designing interdisciplinary arts-focused programming that will be of most practical use to participants.

This grounded theory research study focuses on the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren in the art museum. As the older adult population continues to grow in number, the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren has been increasingly studied in many academic fields (Mueller, Wilhelm, & Elder, 2002; Timonen & Arber, 2012), however, it has yet to be extensively addressed within the scope of the art museum (Sterry & Beaumont, 2005). Guiding questions that asked what grandparents and grandchildren said about how being in the art museum affects their relationship, as well as what these responses mean for museum educators when implementing museum educational resources directed this study. This research study had three phases. The first phase occurred at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. Four grandparent/grandchild participant groups interacted with the museum space without any intervention. I gathered observational and interview data from the visit in the form of transcriptions and field notes. The second phase centered on the creation of a self-guided activity pack based on the stated and unstated goals of the grandparent and grandchildren participants that I uncovered during the first visit. The third phase focused on the participant groups using the self-guide activity pack, again at the McNay Art Museum, and culminated the study. The three findings from the data are: (1) grandparents want a way to connect with their grandchildren, (2) grandparents and grandchildren want to have fun together, and (3) art is a means to an end of relationship building in the art museum. Following the grounded theory methodology, I produce a substantive theory based in the four participant groups that reflects the findings. From this theory, I also propose a set of possible best practices for art museum educators to use in their institutions to serve grandparents and grandchildren.

This single case study examines the role of the art museum in relation to students’ perceptions of themselves as artists. Within the school setting students are asked to create, study and exhibit art using similar techniques and methods of adult artists within the art community. Student artwork, however, is not perceived as art that is worthy of display within that art community and is usually limited to the school context. Additionally, if students visit museums with their school, the visit is typically limited to once per school year, if the budget allows. Students are not afforded the opportunity to visit the same museum or exhibit multiple times and are therefore limited in their ability to navigate the learning possibilities of an art museum and to establish an understanding of their role within an art community outside of school. The primary goal of this study was to understand how learning and exhibiting within the museum context affects students’ perceptions of themselves as artists. Specifically, the study focused on both the unique learning environment afforded by a museum, along with student art exhibition situated in a professional, non-school context. Using a single case study design, seven elementary school students in grades three thru five participated in learning activities within the context of an art museum. Visiting the same exhibit multiple times, the students explored the galleries at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art from the perspective of a museum visitor, docent, curator and artist. They also independently produced art work outside of the museum that culminated in a student exhibition held at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art. The findings of this research suggest that exhibition within the museum setting positively impacted the students but did not immediately influence their artist identity. The findings also demonstrate the value of providing students with the opportunity to visit not only the same museum multiple times but also the same exhibit in order to deepen student understanding and strengthen their awareness of the art community that exists outside of the classroom. The implications for art and museum educators are examined along with suggestions for further research.

Wayfinding is very important for travelers. One example is, communicative symbol systems used at international airports. Art museums also need to employ visual guidance to help people effectively navigate the space.This prototype project involved designing a universal wayfinding symbol system for art museums based on art movements and geographic regions. The objective of the project is to make wayfinding easier for international museum visitors using visual guidance. The subject was selected through research and discussion with the thesis advisors. The refinements were made based on feedback from diverse audience of users and students at Imagine RIT. The project has two main sections: Symbol System and Applications. The symbol system prototype includes eight grid-system-based symbols, which are Rome, Greece, Asia, Egypt, Painting, Ceramic, 17th Century art and 18th Century art. The Applications include museum stores products, activities at exhibitions, physical museum wall wayfinding, and E-map application designs on mobile devices. The purpose is to help people remember and recognize the symbol system. This project is intended to benefit international museum visitors.

This research focuses on the implementation of participatory and interactive digital media in the museum setting and the impact on different parts of the museum which react and change differently. This qualitative case study aims to explore the inclusion of educational technology in the Cleveland Museum of Art and how the implementation affects different departments within the museum differently. Rather than using traditional institutional change theory which references the institution as a whole, this research shows that an institution as the sum of various moving parts. This research will serve to fill a hole in the current literature of nonprofit arts and be available as a resource to those in the field. By understanding how the different parts are affected in different ways, a greater understanding of “institutional change” as a changing of parts rather than the whole can be gained.

Given the world is increasingly driven by technology, it should come as no shock that art museums are working to increase their online presence. Many museums have maintained websites since the earliest days of the World Wide Web, but recently these museums are seeking to digitize their collections in order to make them publicly available for Internet users. While smaller museums struggle to find the finances and expertise to commit to this task, larger institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art maintain the financial wherewithal to begin such massive undertakings. However, the question remains as to why any museum might wish to make their highly-prized collections publicly available online. The impetus behind museums’ “going online” results from the European histories of aristocracy and connoisseurship from which the museum emerged, and the struggle of American museums to make good on their missions to service “the people” in spite of such historical influence. The Internet has been viewed both skeptically and liberally as a means to complete this mission, but the consequences of “going online” remain intertwined in the present formation of the public’s understanding of the Internet its liberal use of content. At best, it is currently possible to look at the previous trajectories of both these institutions, the museum and the Internet, in order to begin to tease apart some of the merging areas of discourse. At first glance, it may seem that the two are not so different, which may in fact prove true, but even the most gentle investigation under the surface of these two institutions will show great dissimilarities in their discourse and methods of control. The Internet and the museum may in fact be at ideological odds with one another, and yet that has not prevented their inevitable merger. The museum has traditionally functioned by leveraging controlled access to the content of its collections as legally manifested through copyright, while the Internet seems to incite near anarchistic access and use of its content as evidenced through “mash-up” culture. This results from the Internet’s method of control known as protocol, and the logic of possibilities it enables. Despite misrepresentations, the Internet is in practice a very controlled institution, but rather than controlling content, protocol controls the technology of the network. Ultimately, the publics of these two disparate discourses of control are unifying under the museum’s digital migration, but such a public remains a work-in-progress.

This thesis examined an interactive, intergenerational gallery entitled MoMA Art Lab: People, located within the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It is composed of various stations that visitors can explore, which include activities appropriate for people of all ages. The motivation for this research came after noticing a lack of family programming in art museums that truly engaged both the adults and children in family groups. Often the children would be active but the parents would sit passively nearby. This was not the case in the MoMA lab, where people of varying ages interacted with both the stations and each other as they explored the activities. This study sought to focus on the aspects of the lab that most often led to the engagement of adults who visited the lab as part of an intergenerational group. In order to examine possible reasons why the lab was able to engage adults, I conducted a case study that involved observing nine groups who entered the lab, interviewing seven of them, and also interviewing five educators in the Family Programs department who held significant roles in the development and running of the lab. The findings revealed that the aspects of MoMA Art Lab: People that most engaged adults were stations focused on art-making and were designed in a way conducive to conversation.

This qualitative case study focuses on the efforts of the education staff at the Meadows Museum of Art as they planned and implemented INsights and OUTlooks – an inclusive educational program, meaning that it was designed for sighted and non-sighted visitors. Although this is an inclusive program, the study concentrates mostly on how it was designed to make art accessible to visitors with visual impairments. The researcher interviewed the staff in charge of leading the program, observed two program sessions, and attended staff meetings related to INsights and OUTlooks to gain a better understanding of how it functions. Current literature (Andrus, 1999; McGinnis, 2007) within the field of art education suggests that staff at art museums should adopt inclusive practices as they design programs and exhibitions. This study explores the process of creating such a program, the tools and approaches utilized to make art accessible to visitors with visual impairments, and the benefits of being inclusive. Research studies such as this one add to the existing but limited literature regarding inclusive programming in art museums.

This thesis is a qualitative case study of a 5th grade field trip program at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia. The value – educational, social, and otherwise – of direct experiences with artworks in the museum setting has been demonstrated in numerous studies (Adams & Sibille, 2005; Burchenal & Grohe, 2007; Burchenal & Lasser, 2007; Henry, 1992; Hubard, 2007), and the single-visit field trip program has been a staple of educational programming at many art museums across the United States. However, much of the recent literature in art education focuses on the benefits of multiple-visit field trip programming (Burchenal & Grohe, 2007; Burchenal & Lasser, 2007), in effect “abandoning” the single-visit program. Given that the single-visit field trip remains a standard in the field, this study sought to explore the ways museum educators can maximize the value of the one-shot field trip model in art museums. Through observations of a 5th grade class on their field trip to the Georgia Museum of Art, interviews with program stakeholders (including museum educators, museum director, the school art teacher, and program donor), and collecting the students’ perspective through written questionnaires, this study revealed insight into the one-visit field trip. An analysis of the various issues and perspectives involved with this type of programming substantiated the hypothesis that there is valuable information to be learned from looking closer at the single-visit program. The findings suggest that by situating itself authentically in its own community, the art museum can make single-visit field trip programs more relevant to students’ lives by employing culturally responsive teaching practices.

This research looks at current issues involved in the deaccessioning of works of modern and contemporary art in American art museums. In May of 2012 the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky deaccessioned three sculptural works made by the artist Petah Coyne. This research aims to explore the issues that arose during this deaccessioning project of these three works and to discover how the staff at the Speed Museum addressed such issues. Of particular interest for this research are the issues that surround the deaccessioning process for works made by artists whom are still alive. Additional cases of deaccessioning, which caused controversy and informed the practices utilized by the Speed Museum staff are also discussed in their relation to serving individual donors and the general public.

Movement through the built-environment is a fundamental social practice; yet, it has often been relegated to something subsequent to, or reliant on, design rather than a meaning-making resource in its own right. This thesis develops spatiogrammatics and a grammar of architecture based on observations of people s movement patterns. In particular, it explores the ways in which people experience their visit to a contemporary art museum in terms of how their movements through, and interaction with objects in, exhibition space create meaning together. This thesis draws on, and synthesises, a number of theoretical frameworks in order to inform its investigation. The first is the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, developed by Halliday (1978), who states that communication is a social semiotic that makes three broad meanings simultaneously: ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. The second is the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, which foregrounds the idea that forms of meaning are created through the co-deployment of various semiotic resources which collaborate to achieve an overarching purpose (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006). The third is spatial semiosis (Ravelli, 2008; Stenglin, 2004, 2009a), an area of research that has begun to develop a grammar of three-dimensional space. This thesis also engages with theories on visitor studies and architecture, developing a new area of study, Spatial Discourse Analysis, a study which considers the users perspective of the built-environment. By foregrounding users as part of the meaning-making process, this thesis casts a different light on the ways in which spatial texts can be deconstructed. Rather than perceiving architecture as a conglomeration of building blocks, this thesis demonstrates that architecture is experienced through movement. As people move, they create a span of spatial text called a promenade, which is constituted of one moment of motion straddled by two moments of stasis. Although there are only two functions, Motion and Stasis, they operate differently at various levels in the museum experience. It is demonstrated that while exhibition space has been organised, negotiated and construed in a particular way, movement is a multifunctional transformative semiotic resource that enables visitors to reorganise, renegotiate and reconstrue it.

While I have always loved to go to the art museum I have often found it difficult to convince friends and family to go with me. It seems to be a particularly daunting task for visitors with disabilities and specifically those with vision impairments. This study surveys the accessibility of the programming for visitors with visual impairments at 25 art museums in the United States of America and how they communicate that information to potential visitors. It highlights museums that go beyond what is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and create programming that is enjoyable for all. This study will be a reference to create a more enjoyable experience for all.

This thesis articulates the importance of studying the experiences, identities, and perceptions of Latino visitors to mainstream art museums. Art museums visitorships are predominantly white, non-Latino, affluent and middle-class, and not even close to representative of the American populace. With the shifting demographics of the country and the static demographics of museum visitors, art museums find themselves in dire need of attracting new and more diverse publics. The Latino population is the fastest growing demographic in the United States, and one that has been grossly underexamined within museum scholarship. Given the paucity of research in this area, I drew primarily from work published by academics, industry researchers, museum evaluators, as well as from the exhibition histories and programming of varied art institutions across the United States, to develop an initial picture of how art museums have considered and engaged Latino audiences. I examine the usefulness the theoretical work of Carol Duncan and Gloria Anzaldúa in framing a study of Latino visitors to art museums, and conclude with recommendations for how art museums, researchers, and other interested scholars can work to build the field of Latino visitor studies.

In the essay, "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence," Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains a problem and a desired solution with regard to visitors, particularly non-artists, viewing art works at the museum. While Merleau-Ponty admits that artists may visit the museum in the sober joy of work, he is concerned that non-artists view art with a "somewhat spurious reverence," as though every work were destined to end up there. He wants non-artists to view art in the sober joy of work as well. Although Merleau-Ponty explains a problem and a desired solution, he does not offer a way for non-artists to view art in the sober joy of work. I believe Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of art as a vestige or passage helps to alleviate the problem by suggesting that we experience works of art in the way artists do.

My narrative case study focuses on how one family uses the exhibitions and educational resources at the Denver Art Museum. I gathered stories of the family’s experiences at the museum in order to determine what their choices reflected about their family values and how they integrated those experiences into their daily lives. This study draws upon socio-cultural and constructivist learning theories by proposing that each family member contributes their prior knowledge and life experiences to the process of making meaning and drawing connections within the art museum. Moreover, even though the family acted as a social learning group, each member constructed personal knowledge in different ways from their shared experiences. I used narrative analysis and coding as means to interpret the meanings of the family’s stories. In addition to identifying the family’s values regarding art museum learning, findings pointed to the imperative need for museum educators to address preparing adult learning partners for visits to art museums with children. The lack of current research pertaining to family learning in art museums was a chief motivator for conducting this study (Sterry & Beaumont, 2006). Research of family interactions in museums has largely focused on non-art museums (Borun, 2002; Borun et al., 1998; Ellenbogen, Luke, & Dierking, 2007). Family art museum experiences are distinct and should be studied separately from those in other types of museums. Research, such as this study, that look specifically at how families use art museum exhibitions and educational resources will address the lack of literature and emphasize the value of art museum experiences for life-long family learning.

Art Around Town is a Columbus Museum of Art outreach program designed for family audiences. The program takes an authentic work of art from the Museum’s collection into different Central Ohio locations, along with a host of family-friendly activities such as artmaking, gallery games and discussions. Art Around Town was created to provide Columbus families with a fun, free, and accessible opportunity to experience authentic art in the comfort of their own respective communities, as well as raise awareness about the Museum and its family-oriented programs and initiatives. The concept for Art Around Town was inspired by the notion of the democratic museum which is an idea championed by museum theorists John Cotton Dana, Stephen Weil, and George Hein. They argued that museums are inherently public institutions and, as such, are bound to serve and be active in their communities in meaningful ways. Museums’ collections belong to all of their community members; not merely to the ones who have the means or inclination to visit the museum buildings. Art Around Town was designed with this philosophy at its core and included only very high quality, important works of art – some of which were literally removed from the Museum’s walls specifically for the program. In addition, the activities included in Art Around Town were modeled on constructivist pedagogical principals, encouraging active participation for genuine learning and personal experience. The central research question that I address in this paper is: What might a museum program look like that is both pedagogically progressive and socially conscious, that serves the community while encouraging learning through experience and meaning-making? I argue that Art Around Town is such a program, presenting the evidence I gathered through a survey that was distributed to the adult (parents, grandparents, guardians, etc.) participants of the program. I also supplement the survey findings with observational data and photographs.The research showed evidence that Art Around Town successfully increased participants’ comfort level with authentic art, raised their awareness of the family-friendly nature of the Columbus Museum of Art, and was positively received by its participants. My observations provided incidences of families having meaningful social interactions with art and evidence of creative problem solving. However, more structured data needs to be collected to confirm these findings. I concluded, therefore, that the research I gathered regarding Art Around Town shows that it is a socially-conscious museum program that adheres to progressive educational philosophies. The program displays evidence that it is meeting many of its goals, however further research needs to be done in order to better understand to extent to which some of the goals are being accomplished.

Art museums in major metropolises are experiencing substantial growth in attendance and the “museumification” of art culture. In contrast art museums in the Midwest are struggling for attendance and to reach out to their general public. These contemporary places of “high-art” are not well connected to their vibrant local art communities. Similarly the art community is detached from the public at large. Thus, the propagation of local art and public appreciation and understanding of art is absent. Instead the culture of the Midwest is one that has become centered on events; e.g. sports, concerts, tours, religion, etc. These spectacles occur at a variety of scales, from the neighborhood to the state to the national level and provide an audience for engagement. This thesis uses a methodology linked to critical art movements that respond to the issues of spectacle culture and the everyday. It oscillates between the realms of art and architecture to facilitate new ways of visual interaction with the everyday environment. The specific site in Cincinnati becomes an armature for regional investigation into larger social questions of spectacle culture, interstitial urban spaces, curating the everyday, art and framing, and human engagement with architecture. Using this successful model for engagement, the local art community can weave together these separate entities: high-art, local art, and the general public, into a new museum typology that resonates more with Midwestern culture through a renewed understanding of art and the everyday environment.

This study examined two art museum and school partnerships in order to learn how partnerships enable an integration of goals, participants' beliefs and values, and learning objectives. This study examined the partnerships through a social constructivist lens and used narrative analysis as way to interpret participants' stories about collaboration. The research found three major themes among participants' stories. Participants: a) valued good communication to establish relationships between partners, b) believed partnership offered students experiences that educated the whole person, and c) felt that students making meaning by interacting in the museum environment was an indicator of success. The study closes with discussion of the researchers' own constructions as they developed throughout the study.

The Finnish architect and theoretician Juhani Pallasmaa writes in The Geometry of Feeling that “the quality of architecture does not lie in the sense of reality that it expresses, but quite the reverse, in its capacity for awakening our imagination.” Architecture is a multi-sensory experience that draws upon the physical, emotional, and intellectual parts of ourbeing. Yet beginning in the mid part of the 20th century much of architectural theory gravitated towards the intellectual and abstract. Exceedingly academic, categorized, and frequently dissociated from emotional and physical experience, architecture as commonly practiced has not only contributed to the alienation of the architect and much of his work from the understanding of the common man, but to our estrangement from an authentic experience of place and being. In opposition to this and established in theory informed by Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Peter Zumthor it is argued that design rooted in the holistic and sensuous experience of architecture, tuned to the particular needs of site and context, solidly grounds us to a genuine connection of place and being. Centered on concrete human experience and architecture’s holistic ability to connect with us on a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, this research is applied to the design case study of an art museum presenting the work of the late Italian-American artist, sculptor, and furniture designer Harry Bertoia.

This thesis is a meditation investigating the ways that domestic display tactics permeate the space of the encyclopedic art museum in ways that affect its framing of art.The integration of increasingly hybrid and elusive contemporary art into a comprehensive museum structure has resulted in the spectacle of the temporary exhibition, "museum fatigue" caused by the enormity of the encyclopedic collection, and a problem of access to the many objects that live in a typical museum's storage.My study proposes to overlay art spaces with the processes and patterns of everyday American life, looking to the structures of display evident in contemporary domestic environments for opportunity to make the art of our times more comfortable and accessible physically and intellectually.A designed space, as a prototypical neighborhood branch location is proposed for two recent developments affecting the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum: a donation of a collection of contemporary craft and a new member group devoted to contemporary art.Parallel to the writing in this document is a creative investigation, in which I’ve made a series of objects that pursue the architectural design by splicing typical and familiar architectural representations, such as a site model, with everyday domestic objects, such as a coffee table.This work questions the hierarchy in which the art museum’s contents are exhibited within, while reorganizing the typical experiences of architectural representations.

Building a relationship with an art museum can provide an art teacher with a valuable tool for connecting students to art, thus promoting art museum awareness and providing unique opportunities for students to learn about art in their community. The primary purpose of this Action Research study was to examine my own teaching practices in relation to establishing a connection to an art museum, and through that relationship, develop opportunities for my students to experience the art museum as a way of learning about art. This thesis documents the experiences of a high school advanced art class and their teacher, myself, while they formed a connection to a local art museum, take part in the museum’s educational workshop, and use what was learned back in the art classroom. Through questionnaire responses, students’ reflective journaling, observations and field notes, and both student and art museum professional interviews, data was collected to discover that students do benefit from learning through the art museum and that learning continues long after their initial experience. Interesting themes that emerged from the data included: Connecting to the art museum; students’ preconceived notions versus actual experience; benefits of learning in the art museum versus learning in the classroom; and applying learned knowledge to classroom activities. Through this research, my goal was to improve my teaching while actively seeking new ways to connect students to art in the world around them. I want my experience to encourage other art educators to seek out local opportunities to connect students to art. This study demonstrated how art educators can use the art museum to teach their students about art and create unique learning opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to provide the fields of art education and museum education with gallery teaching practice that uses students’ prior knowledge of art making as the means to guide interpretation of art in the museum. This study develops touring methods that maintain the identity of the student artists in the context of adult artists’ works in the museum. This investigation is an action-based research study of how a museum educator can develop touring practice to use art objects to enable students to think reflectively on their art making. The results of this study identify the characteristics of an art museum tour that is centered on students and art making. This study demonstrates a framework for teaching in the museum that incorporates constructivist learning theory, social and active learning, a concepts-based approach to art learning, and develops student cognition.

Contemporary artworks, while revolutionary in their investigations of form, durability, commodification, objectification, and meaning, now float languidly within alien gallery spaces – islands far from both the Motherland and Masters that created the work. Adrift and hopelessly lost, works tread in endless white walled rooms and corridors, abandoned upon wooden floors, and blinded by tightly focused track lighting. A sea of endless identical spaces represent the outcomes of a search for a universal neutral space molded by formal regulations established by the Modernist zeitgeist four decades ago. Modernism’s demise both in art and architecture has yet to manifest change in the display spaces where artwork work is installed, ignoring the innovation brought by both architects and artists in their respective fields. Competition, a word representing a perceived threat from architecture’s involvement not just on the exterior but within gallery design today, negates the possibility for a new symbiotic relationship to exist between the art figure and the framework that binds it visually. By studying developments in both site-specific installation art and architecture this thesis will search for the possibility of reconciliation between art and architecture, thus giving relevancy once again to each in a contemporary context through a relationship that activates the viewer as a participant rather than a mere observer, where a work of art reciprocally relates to its display space, and the gallery with the milieu it shares with local artists. In order to achieve this contextual figured-figure this thesis will analyze how critical design process could form between sites located within the artist’s communities of DUMBO, Williamsburg and Red Hook in Brooklyn, how the design approach will differ between these three sites and the typical major art institutions in nearby New York City, around installation artwork created by local artists, and finally, inclusion of the neighborhood that represents a target audience existing outside of the bourgeois and aristocracy that is today exclusively associated with the art world.

The question of the art museum's failure to engage wider audiences remains relatively unexamined and has neither widely catalysed nor changed professional practice either in curatorial, educational, or public program domains. In this study, the educational aim of the art museum is discussed. The work of Pierre Bourdieu is examined. Bourdieu argues that museum display principles, interpretive strategies, and educational techniques, propagated within the paradigm of modernism, implicitly assume possession of cultural literacy skills which are the sole privilege of the educated.The author concludes that working within and across the curatorial and educational environments of an art museum, while avoiding the pitfalls of the modernist tradition, is also a significant step toward engaging wider audiences than the cultual 'elite' in the development of visual literacy skills.