Museums and Schools

Museums as educational institutions can provide social, aesthetic, and historical meaning to our lives. Bringing schoolchildren to museums on field trips is a traditional way of introducing them to the museum's collections. This book describes a program developed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to bring museum collections to classrooms through their teachers. It illustrates how an idea took shape, the program that emerged and the conclusions drawn, and might serve to spark other ideas for outreach collaborations between museums and schools.

"I came away with a new appreciation for the history of civilization. I kept thinking why on earth not teach history through art!" - Brenda Johnson, teacher