Evaluation of Facilitation before going to a Museum

Things are the way they are. Social and cultural experiences create limitation in understanding because “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Facilitators tend to stray towards what they know and are institutionalized to do things certain ways because that is just how it is “supposed to be.”  Art education is very malleable but it all depends on what the teacher’s learning goal is.

Museums are very odd in the sense that most people have different perspectives and biases towards museums depending on how they look at art.  Museums can be boring and quit or exciting and interesting, and very interchangeable between bittersweet adjectives.  This makes it very troubling for the facilitators who work within the museum.

So the pre-requisite to a museum would be to teach a student how to look at art.  However, I find this difficult because do you teach the students to learn by technical qualities or contextual qualities? Is it important that the student feels what the artist intended or what they get out of a piece?  There are no wrong answers in art. So what do you teach students to look for before they go to a museum?

My personal bias toward museums was the curators assuming that the visitor has no understanding of art and it becomes like a boring history lesson.  It is a myth that museums are boring because they are very awe-inspiring, but it is what I believed since a very young age.  We as facilitators have to evaluate our perspectives and biases as well as our teaching goals.