IU Art Museum offers programs for students

The IU Art Museum offers many programs to visitors in order to enrich cultural knowledge.

One of the most popular programs is the student tours for kindergarten through 12th-grade students, Curator of Education Ed Maxedon said.

“This program has been running since 1982,” Maxedon said. “We started the second-grade tour when the building was opened. Since 1989, we started developing the grade-tour program. We have a tour for each grade that is tailored for the state curriculum guide and the state standards.”

The IU Art Museum provides bus transportation of up to $100 for people involved in the program. Most schools using the program are in Monroe County, but the tours reach out to the entire seven county region of south-central Indiana.

The tours are a way to level the playing field for tour participants. The group setting provides a comfortable atmosphere to express opinions and ideas with others, Maxedon said.

“The second grade program was such a popular program, and by the early ‘90s people were lining up to be tour guides,” Maxedon said. “It was the most popular program and the longest living program at the museum. We thought, why not do more tours and do age-appropriate tours for each grade, and it just started developing out of that.”

Each tour is designed to match the Indiana state curriculum for that grade. For instance, the first grade tour is primarily about line shape and color, in fifth grade the students are taught about American history and high school classes are more discussion-oriented and delve into the different types of art.

Cheryl Maxwell, an art teacher at Grandview Elementary who also teaches at Summit Elementary, often brings her classes to the art museum.

“The tours are a really great way for local children to get a chance to experience real art,” Maxwell said. “A lot of our students do not get a chance to travel very much and most of their experience with art is through books or through posters and it is really great for them to see the real thing.”

Often, the teachers come up with the lesson ideas to teach the students.

Tours can be customized to the needs of the teachers and what they would like to focus on, Maxedon said.

“It gives them a background for when we write about art in class.” Maxwell said. “Context is what I can really get them to experience.”

Maxedon’s biggest goal is to meet state standards and tie the tours into the normal curriculum for students. The tour guides, or docents, are very helpful to the teachers.

“The docents are usually incredibly knowledgeable,” Maxwell said. “A lot of them are retired teachers. Some I know are even retired art teachers. They have a lot of experience.”

The students also appreciate the vast understanding of art that the docents have.

“Most of the times the kids come back and say, ‘You were right. The docents were great. They told us things we didn’t know from you,’” Maxwell said. “It really turns out to be a really good experience.”