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ABSTRACT
“ArtInSight” is a three-pronged constructivist education model for museum teaching. Utilizing (1) conversational tours, (2) mindfulness-based insight activities, and (3) art-making exercises, viewers develop critical and visual thinking skills and apply them to both arts-based experiences and to everyday life. This approach broadens viewers’ capacity for sustained observation, particularly with art that is technically or emotionally complex. This article explores the model’s insight activities, which focus on preparing K-12 students for engagement with art and to be cognizant of the thoughts, feelings, and knowledge they bring to the art-viewing experience. These techniques nurture a mental space for students to absorb, engage with, and react to the messages of the art and context in which they are viewing it. In other words, by giving students permission to focus on matters of the mind, insight activities create fertile ground for transformational experiences.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
About the authors
Laura Dickstein Thompson, Ed.D., is MASS MoCA’s founding director of education and Kidspace gallery curator. Since 2002, she has overseen Kidspace programs organized in partnership with local schools, curated 28 exhibitions with notable artists, and designed innovative art programming for all audiences. Thompson is also an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College, and is a long-time meditator who has participated in numerous trainings with meditation leaders such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, Pema Chödron, and Thich Nhat Hahn.
Amanda Tobin is the K-12 Education Manager at MASS MoCA, where she has developed school engagement and social justice programs, particularly for area partner schools, since 2014. She holds a B.A. in Art History and East Asian Studies from Oberlin College and an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Since 2017, Tobin has also served as Adjunct Instructor in Arts Management at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Notes
1 Dewey, Art as Experience, 54.
2 See authors such as Pema Chödron, Thicht Nhat Hanh, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Shunryu Suzuki, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama for additional background on Buddhist meditation history, practices, and current manifestations.
3 Kidspace is a child-centered art gallery and hands-on studio presenting exhibitions and educational experiences in collaboration with leading artists. The program focuses on contemporary social issues and expanding notions of art and art materials. Artists are selected for the educational and artistic merit of their work and their ability to connect to children (and adults). Exhibitions have featured renowned artists from around the world including Long-Bin Chen, Devorah Sperber, Portia Munson, Lisa Hoke, Willie Birch, Gajin Fujita, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Roger Shimomura, Ran Hwang, Nick Veasey, and Nick Cave.
4 Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are, 3.
5 Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step, 22.
6 Puff, “Quieting the Monkey Mind with Meditation.”
7 Dawn Martin, email message to Amanda Tobin, March 26, 2018.
8 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 66.
9 Kaufman, “‘The Only Thing That Will Save Us from Ourselves’,” 143.
10 Farago, “Why Museums are the New Churches.”
11 Berila, Integrating Mindfulness into Anti-Oppression Pedagogy, 153.
12 williams, “Introduction: Enter Here,” xviii.