Museum Resources for Faculty (2020-2021)
The Museum is here to help with remote classes in 2020-2021. Find information below for details and see our tips for selecting objects.
Teaching with Art & Material Culture Resources for Faculty
The Museum has developed practical and dynamic resources to support faculty during the 2020-21 academic year, adapted for the new 7.5 week modular schedule. Below please find a menu of pre-packaged and customized offerings, which can be incorporated into remote classes. For more information, or to schedule a Museum session for your class, please contact Ellen Alvord at ealvord@mtholyoke.edu.
Resources for Remote Visits
Use of Digital Images
Pre-packaged virtual resources:
- Video introductions to current exhibitions, gallery installations, and object spotlights (i.e. Money Matters exhibition, Teaching with Art exhibition, interview with artist Bisa Butler re: Broom Jumpers, etc.)
- Video introduction to the Art Museum
- Video introduction to the Skinner Museum
- Tutorials (i.e. how to search the 5C collections database)
- Virtual Engagement offerings, including our Virtual 3D Museum
Customized experience options:
- Interactive activities and icebreakers (such as scavenger hunts, pair and share activity, mysteries of history game with material culture objects, drawing exercises, etc.)
- Live close-looking session with Museum staff (which can support visual literacy, close reading, critical thinking, evaluating evidence, and questioning assumptions skills); can range from 15-50 minutes (read more about close looking here)
- Visual materials for teaching such as hi-res image links or slide presentations
- Discussion questions to support Department Learning Goals
- Museum educator/curator visits (to discuss specific artworks, thematic topics, etc.)
- Recording artwork conversations with faculty and Museum educators/curators (see examples of MHCAM in Conversation videos)
- Reflection, creative response, and research-based assignments
- Visual materials for teaching such as hi-res image links or slide presentations
- Label-writing workshop (learn more about label-writing collaboration with Amy Rodgers’s “Activist Shakespeare” class)
- Virtual Exhibition project (a longer, more involved commitment, but can be done for 1-2 courses per 7.5 week module)