Books: Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience

Authors Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee, museum educators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, respectively, consider it time for museum education to have a pedagogy of its own and they set out to provide a framework for such in 11 freestanding essays that do not have to be read sequentially.

They provide a history and theory of the subject by describing museum education from an American perspective. They focus almost exclusively on the education of adults in art museums, possibly because they feel that sufficient attention has been lavished on the very young and they want to redress the balance.

This earnest endeavour looks at the development of teaching about art in the US over the past 100 years, starting with a didactic approach, then relaxing into more varied methods.

They emphasise the importance of flexibility and intuition necessary for good teaching. The balance between the giving of information and the asking of questions to seek response is a theme constantly revisited by the authors.

While distrusting reliance on the questioning technique, they conclude that a cautious mixture of both is generally useful according to the nature of those being taught, a horses-for-courses pragmatism.

References and footnotes are copious throughout all chapters and the index is particularly comprehensive, demonstrating the most detailed research. It provides a useful catalogue of alternative sources of information on the subject.

The book does not attempt to deal with more challenging audiences, such as those brought to the art museum who are not predisposed to be interested, special-needs groups, the elderly, or those with language barriers in multicultural groupings. Instead, the concentration is entirely on those students involved in courses or interested adults.
 
Teaching conversations are reported exactly as they happened in the galleries to illustrate the precise interaction between teacher and student.

A need for clear goals is stressed whatever system of learning is espoused with a quotation from former Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello, who saw the need to “delight, instruct and uplift”.

The 17th-century painter Gerrit Dou famously said that art should “delight, amuse, deceive and instruct”, a useful warning against over-interpretation.

Elliott Kai-Kee’s historical overview is pertinent in these relativistic days when all the major artistic canons are regarded as equally valid or at least worthy. The book reminds us not to push aside the insights of art historians, curators and academics.

Eilean Hooper Greenhill, a doyenne of museum education, makes a crucial point that “personal interpretations are forged through cultural frameworks”, something that should not be overlooked. 

These authors make the case that it is only through scholarly insights in the hands of accomplished teachers that the objective of critical analysis and deep appreciation can be achieved.

The authors take the teaching of art very seriously and are committed to a “dialogical” method that will only result in failure if attempts are made to “simplify the subtle art of gallery teaching”.

Yet everyone of us has come across the charismatic teacher, someone with such a talent for communication that they somehow change us forever – these are the teachers we never forget.

Such teachers, and they come from all backgrounds, have a special gift that is instinctive, despite theories, systems and philosophies.

They have the extraordinary knack of passing on passion and joy, and inspiring others to want to find out more for themselves. That magical delivery is what makes a star teacher and that quality, in all its many guises, may defy analysis.

This book will interest museum studies students and museum educators and may lead to hot debate from the UK’s rather different cultural perspective.

Gillian Wolfe is the director of learning and public affairs at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London