202,110 and counting...: Our work with kids

Summary

While talking with our teacher partners I ask: what do your students need? Do they have art weekly? How can this museum experience be impactful in both your classroom and in their lives? 

Background

In these conversations I find inspiration in the spirit of wanting every child to find that same connection with art that formed for me when I was in first grade and visited the Brooklyn Museum with a New York City public school. Art was not at the center of my household: I found it through teachers and schools exposing me to art at an early age and I am still grateful for today.

How can the Neuberger contribute to exposing children to art at a young age? I believe that the exploratory nature of making art, examining art, and being stimulated by art, no matter one’s age, can help us approach problem solving and see the world in new and innovative ways.

Our school field trips are not the only way we have served kids in the community. Over fifty years, we’ve also created virtual experiences, partnered with libraries to bring activities home during the pandemic, delivered art-filled backpacks to an entire school to provide access to art processes and making, visited schools to give in-classroom lectures, participated in festivals, and hosted family events and free family days to name a few highlights.

I like to crunch numbers, so I did some detective work compiling Excel spreadsheets and typewriter-written lists to find a rough estimate of how many children we have toured since our founding.

It’s really impossible to know exactly, so please don’t hold me to it, but the Education Department has kept really excellent records. Are you ready? 202,110, and that doesn’t include experiences that we have offered outside of the Museum. I like to imagine that some of these children, now adults, that stepped into the Neuberger still hold onto a little nugget they learned while they were here. Even if it’s as simple as “Jackson Pollock splattered paint.”

 

Diana Puglisi
Curator of Education
Neuberger Museum of Art

Date

October 16, 2024