Museum Education as Curriculum: Four Models, Leading to a Fifth

Overview & Synopsis

Though art educators in museums and in schools share content fields and professional backgrounds, they operate under quite different practical constraints. The autonomy of museum education, shaped by museums' missions more than by state guidelines, is part of its appeal as a profession; museum programs, in shaping their very malleable subject matters into formats responsive to various backgrounds, have a special appeal to diverse audiences. This article explores the nature of museum education through four classical models of curriculum, and proposes a fifth model that connects museum education to the traditional trajectory of a storyline. Examples are taken largely from art-museum education.