Art Museum Pedagogy Workshop

The CU Art Museum invites applications to participate in a summer workshop on interdisciplinary pedagogy using the museum’s collections and exhibitions. Through this hands-on experience CU faculty will discover museum resources and offerings to enhance object-based teaching and experiential learning. Faculty in all colleges and schools are encouraged to apply. Students from disciplines as varied as arts and humanities, business, law, engineering and the social sciences can all benefit from skills taught at the museum. We invite applications from faculty who have not yet worked with the museum as well as from those already familiar with the museum’s resources.

Over the course of two consecutive afternoons, participants will engage with and practice museum strategies for encouraging dialogueand critical inquiry and will collaborate with museum staff and teaching colleagues to develop a lesson or series of assignments involving 3-5 artworks from the collections. Workshop leaders will meet with participants in advance to determine artwork and themes to meet curricular goals.

Workshop goals:

  • Participants will learn about museum resources and become familiar with museum spaces available for teaching and learning.
  • Participants will network across departments to create acommunity of instructors interested in expanding pedagogical practice through with object-based learning.
  • Participants will identify 3-5 artworks that they can incorporate in curriculum and will build out a sample lesson or assignment around the artworks.

The workshop will take place at the museum over Wednesday, August 17th and Thursday, August 18th from 11:00 AM–3:30 PM. Box lunch will be provided.

Stipend: $300 to research accounts.

To apply, please submit a letter of interest by midnight on July 22, 2022, to Hope Saska, chief curator and director of academic engagement (<hope.saska@colorado.edu>). Please describe your interest in this workshop and indicate course-related themes you hope to address through visual and material culture. Criteria for selection is based on expressed interest in expanding or incorporating object-based pedagogy in the classroom and is not based on prior experience with teaching from objects. We aim to select ten applicants representing a range of experiences and disciplinary approaches. Selected applicants will be notified by August 1, 2022. Questions are encouraged.