Emily Kruszynski and Professor Sharon Gray, Art Education
After having traveled to Russia and met with directors, educators, and curators at some of the most prominent art museums in St. Petersburg (the Hermitage and the State Russian Museums) and Moscow (the Pushkin, Tretyakov, and New Tretyakov Museums), I have come back with valuable research that may contribute to the art education field in North America. While I was in Russia, I conducted interviews with museum personnel and observed the different educational programs of the museums. I also took note of their teaching strategies and art philosophies, in order to learn what might be adapted to strengthen our own art education and museum programs.
The procedure included me going to the museums and scheduling a meeting time with the museum directors. I had the opportunity of meeting with them and carrying out interviews. They would often introduce me to instructors/teachers, curators, museum employees, etc through which I was able to ask more questions and carry on discussions to find out as much as I could on topic of museum education. I also did a lot of observing of how they taught and observed the museum visitors as well. I took down notes and compared and contrasted their experience from a North American one. I was also fortunate to learn about the art they displayed and valued, as well as how their museums worked and what strategies and technologies they used to educated their public.
As a result of my research, I was able to learn that the Russian people have a very strong regard for the arts and use art as a way of recording and honoring their history, as well as creating a moral and educated society. They have programs and technologies that encourage a love and understanding of art through observation, engagement, and production based on personal interpretation and scholarly instruction. Knowledge of art and the museum experience is very much based on these programs and educational methods, which defines the general public’s understanding and view of the art world.
In conclusion, the experience was a valuable success. I found these educational programs in Russian Museums to be very important to its participants and valuable to our own society because we can not only learn from the things that they do differently, but gain insight from those things that are effective. I was greatly surprised at the enthusiastic response I received from the participants and at the opportunities they offered me to gather such a vast amount of information. I hadn’t anticipated being invited to private art shows, observe students in a classroom environment, be a guest at a year-end student production, attend meetings with museum employees, benefactors, and contributors, among many other wonderful learning opportunities. I was surprised at how each interview took a different angle and how I was able to learn different things from different people and see different points of view.
With this research I was able to help publish an article entitled International Museum Education Modeling: A Case Study of Selected Russian Art Museums in The Journal of Recreation and Leisure (JRL) 2008, with Dr. Sharon R. Gray and Dr. Howard R. Gray that explores some of the findings from the research. In April 2009, I will be presenting these research findings along with my mentor, Dr. Sharon Gray, at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Convention in Minneapolis. This will be a great opportunity to share this valuable information with other art educators from across the nation. This presentation entitled Contemporary Issues of Community, Content, and Control in Russian Art Education: Implications for Art Museum Culture in the United States, represents a collaboration between Dr. Sharon R. Gray, Dr. Herman du Toit, of the BYU Museum of Art, and myself. It addresses pressing issues in the field of art museum education as a result of the rapid adoption of social networking technologies. Little research has been conducted about this phenomenon and art museums, worldwide, would benefit significantly from an informed study. The findings of this project would assist in aligning K-12 school based engagement with the changing practices of art museum education and provide a greater understanding of these changes for the benefit of art museum professionals and museum/school collaborators.
This study will inform better practices in both art museum interpretation, and in teacher preparation by enlarging our understanding of how these new practices can enhance teaching and learning in art museums and in the classroom. Students will also be introduced to learning strategies and technologies that promote lifelong learning, and which provide opportunities for lifelong service through the ongoing role of volunteers in public art museums. These findings would help to align the preparation of new teachers, such as myself and museum/school collaboration with these new practices, thereby helping to making our college and the university a leader in this field. The project will be submitted to the International Journal of Education through Art, which is published by InSEA (the International Society for Education Through Art).