For our last peek at Arts Ed in a New England museum space, it seems fitting to end in the state and museum that first sparked my interest in community engagement and museum education: The Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The Shelburne Museum is ineffably unique, as it is not exactly an art, history, or craft museum, but a delightful medley of seemingly anything and everything. This is apparent even at the most basic level: the Shelburne Museum is not housed in one building, but instead operates of a campus of 39 independently standing structures – including a schoolhouse, covered bridge, antique carousel, and a fully restored 1906 steamboat!

Image credit: Pearl Kermani

 

Founded in 1947 by Electra Havemeyer Webb, the museum’s unique identity and massive collection is largely thanks to Mrs. Webb’s vast, diverse aesthetic tastes and interest in the unique style of folk art, American architecture, and design. In effect, she was arguably one of the first collectors of Americana, and employees liken entering the Shelburne campus to taking a step into Electra’s mind.

In addition to being a one-of-a-kind experience in the scope of New England museums, the Shelburne Museum is also deeply rooted in its local community. Perhaps due to Vermont’s inescapable small-town vibe, to the museum’s long standing role as a local school resource, or to its physical position right at a key point on a main local throughway, the Shelburne Museum has long been a fixture of local Vermont life and a regular community leader in cultural and educational enrichment for all.

Art & Education

Set against the other three museums featured in this series, the Shelburne is in some ways a reflection of several different types of museums and the common link that connects all four. Like the Fitchburg Art Museum, they keep a base operating layer of tours and classes; like the Farnsworth Art Museum they start slow – piloting a program with one school and then build up slowly; and like MASS MoCA, they are a facet and community fixture for arts, local heritage, and community building.

Yet, they are most interesting in our current discussion theme as the only museum featured in this series that – in the past two years – has opened a brand new building and adopted a brand new annual operating schedule. This is interesting, and perhaps essential, for us to reflect on as it all started from one main point that the Shelburne asserts: education and community programming are intrinsically linked. This belief is so essential to the museum operations that their education department is actually the department of Education and Public Programming. As the department director, Karen Peterson, affirms, “education is not exclusive […] all of our programs at some point will always involve an educational component.” The museum does not seek to differentiate between education and public programs, but instead embraces the wide ranging opportunities this view allows.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that the Shelburne Museum’s new building is a brand new Center for Art and Education, designed to present exhibitions and special events, offer diverse classes and workshops for all ages, host presentations and round-tables, and more year round. Perhaps worried by traditional interpretations of “art education” which conjures images of a building full of repeating art classes, the programming at the Center for Art and Education is decidedly robust, multi-dimensional, and different, as they only have one actual classroom, an auditorium, research space, and two exhibition galleries. In addition, while they have created a base of classes or tours that school or private groups can sign up for, these offerings change thematically along with events and exhibitions in the Center to reflect rotating museum exhibits and collection focus.

A Truly Shared Endeavor

Folding all of this recent development into the Shelburne’s actual actions towards providing high-quality arts education for local students, it becomes easy to observe their careful and deliberate process towards being able to better provide for local students of any age. The Shelburne Museum believes fully in the Shared Endeavor concept and, as a cultural community leader, has always lead camps, tours, workshops, and classes for K-12, college, senior, and disabled students in addition to their regular programmatic offerings.

More recently, however, the Shelburne has ventured into more intensive school partnerships – creating long term relationships with local elementary schools. Similar to other museums, the Shelburne first worked with local elementary schools, bringing students in for 90-minute sessions in special exhibits and galleries and using art to explore math and science topics with the teachers. This partnership allowed them to develop a model to offer to all local K-8 schools that provides a “series of ten interactive workshops for students in grades K-8 that meet educational standards from Vermont’s Framework of Standards and Grade Expectations/Common Core State Standards and introduces students to concepts and themes in art, language arts, math, science, and social studies.” These workshops use the museum’s collection in a new light; using the Ticonderoga steamboat to discuss “Brains vs. Brawn,” the museum’s extensive quilt collection to explore “Math by Design,” or the horticultural-rich gardens to study “Beauty and Botany.”

Images source: Shelburne Museum website

 

Images source: Shelburne Museum website

 

In addition, these partnerships only grow in rich educational opportunities, as the Shelburne has seen and pursued the potential to bring in other community cultural partners. For example, they have recently started to work with the Vermont Symphony to co-sponsor arts-learning opportunities for local students. Considering the challenges and limited budgets that schools and arts organizations alike face on a regular basis, the Shelburne realized that it is becoming increasingly expensive and time-consuming for schools to create or fund creative programming, and for community arts organizations to each seek out their own individual partnerships. By pursuing collaborative models that would still serve all local students and allow all cultural leaders to share the task of providing a well-rounded education with schools, the Shelburne can save everyone money, time, and stress; not to mention provide an all around better experience for students.

A Careful Model

So, what can we learn from this last model and our investigation into Arts Ed in Museum Spaces? The Shelburne presents the perfect story and education system for us to end on, as it is one that was developed out of a very recent renewed shift in institutional focus. That’s the first piece of good news: this isn’t anywhere near impossible for even small museums, but actually quite promising. The Shelburne – not to mention the Fitchburg Art Museum as well – consciously decided to shift from operating as a “museum-centric” organization, operating only within the walls of the institution, to a “community-centric” hub of arts and culture, operating increasingly beyond the physical walls of the museum and reaching out to more and more stakeholders elsewhere in the community. And the current result yields a lot of opportunity and potential for them that would not have been realistic or achievable had they not pursued such a community-oriented, education-based approach.

The second piece of good news might be more subjective but I’ll share it with you anyways: the tactics and techniques presented by the Shelburne, as well as the Farnsworth Art Museum, MASS MoCA, and the Fitchburg Art Museum are clearly deliberate and careful steps that as a whole constitute four great sets of blueprints for varying museums seeking to become more involved in their local arts education ecosystem.

Across the board, the important pieces to take away are simple: a museum has to be aware of its current status – in size, budget, and location – to truly understand how its actions will shape, affect, and help its surrounding community. From there, all four of these museums, each in their own different way, speak to the necessity of beginning small and building up. Finally, all four museums affirm the central theme of the Shared Endeavor Model: they all put the student first. Of course, some give us an example of how you can segment “the student” into different age groups, but across the board these museums focused on the student’s whole education, and shed light on what gaps and opportunities remained that they could fill working with schools and other culture and community partners.