Tell Us More About Your Life as a Museum Educator.

I haven’t written about it too much on this blog, but I just finished my Ph.D. in Urban Education with a focus on art museum educators. For the past few years I’ve been delving deeply into how art museum educators perceive and understand their experiences with theory, method, and preparation. To do this, I had to ask a lot of questions about art museum educators’ lives.

During my research I was constantly surprised that art museum educators had a hard time talking about how they got to be where they are. I honestly think it was just because no one had ever really asked them to talk about why the work is personally important. I think we have to constantly explain how our work impacts students and teachers, but rarely how it impacts us.

During the AAM conference, I had the extreme pleasure in attending a session called Early Museum Educators as Muse, which provided insight into the lives of John Cotton Dana, Louise Connolly, Arthur Lismer, Hillary Rebay, Phillip Yenawine, and Albert Barnes. Their stories were incredibly inspiring and were told by a who’s who in museum education today: Wendy Woon (MoMA), Rika Burnham (Frick), Kim Kanatani (Guggenheim), Kelly McKinley (Art Gallery of Ontario), and Carol Duncan (Ramapo College).  At the end of the session I asked the panelists to discuss how they were capturing their personal histories as they were living, and now I want to pose that question to the universe.

I think that museum educator lives are fascinating. Personally, I’ve done everything from wrangling live alligators to organizing monks from Bhutan to perform pujas on artworks, and I don’t think that my story is that out of the ordinary for museum educators. I mean, how many of us have sat in our office with a bucket of sheep brains or cow eyes on our desk while eating lunch?

How are you keeping your stories for future museum educators?  Our Education Blog is one way to give opportunity to our Education staff to discuss things that are happening at the Rubin Museum, but there are lot’s of folks who are trying to talk about their lives in museums. I’ve started using Pinterest as a personal blog (or microblog depending on your definition of Pinterest) about my work in museums (Lifeworld of a Museum Educator). I find that looking for a picture on the web (or posting one from my phone) and writing a short blurb about something from my day has been really helpful with reflective practice.

Recently I’ve been reading  The Works at NYSCI written by my old boss Eric Siegel, Director and Chief Content Office at the New York Hall of Science. Even though his posts focus on work happening at the museum, it’s laced with his point of view- which I find fascinating.

If you’re reading this blog,  you’ve probably read Museums 2.0. Nina Simon, Executive Director of Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has been a constant blogger, and is never shy about sharing successes or failures.

Seb Chan the Director of Digital & Emerging Media, Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum authors the blog Fresh and New(er) which I find to be a really intriguing dialogue about museums and digital technology.

I also find Paul Orselli’s blog ExhibiTricks to be provocative about discussions regarding low/high tech exhibitions in the museum world (plus lot’s of other fun things that Paul does).

Each of these blogs gives insights not just into the world of museums, but into each of these museum educator/administrator/developer life/work stoires, and it’s a conversation I think we should broaden.

Who else do you read/follow in the museum ed world? Whose museum life do you find inspiring? How do reflect upon your work? Let me know in the comments section here!