Raising Children in Museums

The chatter sounded like a thousand summer cicadas as the children from Magnolia Park Elementary School gathered in the Ocean Springs Community Center adjoining the new Walter Anderson Museum of Art. The floor to ceiling murals by Mississippi artist Walter Inglis Anderson distinguished the large open room as a magical place.

That day the community center was even more intriguing for the children because a large and mysterious group of adults, all dressed in black and holding musical instruments, were seated at one end of the room. A traveling symphony orchestra from Michigan's upper peninsula had performed the evening before in New Orleans and I had arrange for the group to present a short children's performance in the community center. Ocean Springs was en route to the their next engagement in Mobile.

The sound of hundreds of excited children was a bit overwhelming and I recall thinking that this had been a very bad idea. We didn't have enough chairs so we decided to seat the children on the floor in front of the orchestra. Here were over 200 relatively well behaved, yet rambunctious, children jostling for the floor space closest to the feet of the musicians.  I began to wonder how I would ever get their attention for the introduction. The act would require me to wade gingerly through a sea of little bobbing heads to the front of the room. Then I noticed the conductor had moved to the front of the orchestra and was poised with arms raised and ready to administer the first down beat. The first three bars of Beethoven's Molto vivace (listen) punctured the air - stunning the children into silent amazement. Each measure of music was almost  like a scolding two syllable phrase.  Sit Down!...Be Still!...Listen!

The children were entranced the remainder of the concert and vibrations from timpani, viola and flutes combined with the bright expressionistic images of animals in the mural made that afternoon very special for all of us. That experience reaffirmed for me the profound affect the arts can have on a children.

Raising a child in the museum benefits the whole child. The intellectual challenges, visual stimulation, and the unique vocabulary all contribute to shaping an engaged learner. The experience also teaches them empathy and introspection. Museum educators and docents will tell you that children have conversations in a museum gallery that they may never have anywhere else because the imagery and history behind the creation of an artwork foster new questions and provoke a response.

About a decade after leaving Ocean Springs I found myself leading an Art Center in the heart of West Palm Beach, Florida. Most of the education programming at the Armory Art Center targeted the retired adult population of south Florida and the affluent seasonal residents of Palm Beach. Offerings included all the traditional studio disciplines and the campus boasted a number of 2-D classrooms, a stone sculpture area, jewelry and metal work studio and a state-of-the-art ceramics building and kiln yard.

By the time I assumed the position in Florida, my interest in youth education had become a full-fledged passion. One of the programs we developed was titled "Picturing Success." There was, and still are, large populations of Haitian and Latino families living in the area. We selected promising gifted and talented teens from under-served schools and low income families and placed them in the adult studio class right beside the Palm Beach socialite learning how to paint. The objective was to provide the opportunity and resources for these promising students to develop a portfolio of work that might improve their chances for admission into a college or university visual arts program. I imagined a by-product of this program might be the social exchange between two disparately different worlds.

The experiment was a success. I secure financial support from our major benefactor, attorney Robert Montgomery, one of the most genuine and altruistic people I've ever had the pleasure knowing. The integration of young people into the senior adult classroom culture also went smoothly. I only wish I could have been privy to the conversations that took place in those classes between an ambitious teen and a mature and wise adult.

At the Hilliard we are also dedicated to our educational mission. The photo to the left captures a moment during the Summer Scholars Program, a partnership between the Hilliard and the Center for Gifted Education at UL Lafayette. The residential program was designed to develop the academic, leadership, and creative skills of  7th, 8th, and 9th grade students who have demonstrated high levels of ability in their school work, in the arts, or in their daily lives. Classes integrate Museum collections in the course work and are taught in the galleries and the A. Hays Town Building.

Last spring the Hilliard Museum, in partnership with the UL Lafayette College of Education Teacher Candidates, presented Creative Classroom for Young Learners (image right). Future teachers provided a series of stories, hands-on activities and lessons related to the museum's current exhibitions. The program targeted ages pre-K - 3rd graders.

Julie Fox (left) with the Lafayette Parish School System conducts her annual Art Smart professional development program for teachers utilizing our exhibitions and the museum collection. The program provided teachers training in ways to utilize museum collections as teaching tools.





For the second year the Hilliard Museum joined Episcopal School of Acadiana (ESA) in our partnership titled the International Children’s Museum (ICM). Through volunteer leadership and ESA faculty, this program integrates art and museum science into the school’s daily curriculum through exhibitions, activities and an international art exchange each year. The objectives include teaching students about the role of museums and art in society and to teach pluralism of the arts and creative thinking in the arts. This program is an effective discipline-based art education tool for faculty, students and families. In the photo above our museum preparator and registrar discuss the basic practices of art handling.

Young people across Louisiana will head back to the classroom over the next few weeks. If you are an educator I hope you will keep in mind the unique resource you have in the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum. Within the next few weeks we will post new lesson plans and gallery guides related to our upcoming fall and spring exhibitions. Please visit our new web site hilliardmuseum.org next month for these new resources for teachers and home school parents.