The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's Mobile Guide program will offer visitors a new way to interact with the Museum's collections by creating audio and visual content that will be delivered through a mobile-optimized Web site (www.naguide.org). The program, available through a user's own mobile device or via iPod Touch players made available, reflects the Museum's commitment to digital interpretation and its larger goal of broadening public accessibility to its collections. This evaluation is part of the larger Mobile Guide project funded through an Engaging Communities grant awarded from the
The Language of Conservation was a collaborative project between libraries, zoos, and poets nationwide to replicate a project originally undertaken by the Central Park Zoo. The project model built zoo, library, and poet-in-residence partnerships in five host cities: Brookfield, Illinois; Jacksonville, Florida; Little Rock, Arkansas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and New Orleans, Louisiana. One aspect of the evaluation was to assess the collaborative process within each of the five partner sites, across the project as a whole, and with project leadership to determine the strengths and challenges of
The Language of Conservation was a collaborative project between libraries, zoos, and poets nationwide to replicate a project originally undertaken by the Central Park Zoo. The project model built zoo, library, and poet-in-residence partnerships in five host cities: Brookfield, Illinois; Jacksonville, Florida; Little Rock, Arkansas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and New Orleans, Louisiana. It was anticipated that the zoo exhibits would result in positive outcomes for zoo visitors who encountered the poetry, including increasing the conservation thinking and language used after a visit and creating a
The Dallas Museum of Art's (DMA) Teaching Programs staff desires to learn more about the student experience occurring in the galleries during one-hour docent-guided tours. The focus of the present implementation evaluation is on the docents' role in facilitating the student experience. Before developing a summative study focused on the impact of tours on students, it was important to understand how the tours were being implemented and to what degree and in what ways they met the standards articulated by the DMA's Education Division. The strong partnership between the practitioner (Molly Kysar
In June 2010, the Gardner contracted with the Institute for Learning Innovation to augment the results of a large scale, Wallace Foundation funded quantitative study. Specifically, ILI was asked to conduct a focused, qualitative study that would provide in depth data about local visitors' long term perceptions of their Gardner Museum experience. Semi structured, retrospective interviews were conducted with 31 museum visitors, months after their Gardner experience. Key results include the following: 1) Study participants demonstrated a range of motivations for visiting the Gardner, but most
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeanine AnceletIsabella Stewart Gardner MuseumJessica J. LukeErin Johnson
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to study its young adults. The study, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), provides a profile of the young adult audience, including their demographics, behaviors, perceptions, and values. The DAM intends to use the results of the study to inform future programming and communication with DAM's young adult visitors. RK&A employed two data collection strategies: standardized questionnaires administered online at Surveymonkey.com to program participants and telephone interviews with core program
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Denver Art Museum
Illuminated Verses explored issues of traditional culture and modernity, as well as differences and diversity within the Islamic world, and offers an interpretive bridge to these content areas for both scholarly and general audiences. Through a symposium and a series of pre-events leading up to that program, Poets House and CityLore explored ways of using poetry, discussion and interpretation of poetry to create bridges for intercultural understanding. The symposium and pre-symposium events also served as a springboard to explore the potential for a broader, potentially national, program. This
This report describes the findings of an evaluation of the K-5 school tour program at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington. These school tours observed in this study are based in the methods of the educational model of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), but take place during hour-long tours in the galleries, rather than repeatedly over longer periods of time, and are integrated with other questions, information, and activities developed specifically at the Frye. The findings reveal positive correlations between the use of VTS questions by gallery guides and desired student participation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie GrabskiLauren LeClaireAmanda Mae BomarFrye Art Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum contracted RK&A for the 2006-2010 study The Art of Problem Solving (APS). The APS study was the second of two studies funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant (the former being the 2003-2005 study Teaching Literacy Through Art) that examined the Guggenheim's long-standing teaching artist in residency program Learning Through Art (LTA). The APS study was designed specifically to determine the effectiveness of the LTA program in teaching problem-solving skills. The APS study measured both
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation of the exhibition "Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500-Present." As described on the DIA Web site, Through African Eyes will illustrate how African artists from diverse cultures have used and continue to use visual forms to reflect their particular societies' changing attitudes toward Europeans, as the latter evolved from stranger to colonizer to the more inclusive Westerner. This evaluation sought to explore visitors' experiences in the exhibition
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Detroit Institute of Arts
Throughout the year, El Museo del Barrio hosts various cultural programs that are open to the public and often free. To explore the effectiveness of the Museum's cultural programs, Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) conducted case studies for three programs Day of the Dead, Three Kings Day, and Super Sabado - Carnival. RK&A conducted naturalistic observations of visitors to the three programs. Trained data collectors unobtrusively observed program attendees and took notes on select behaviors using observation guides specific to each program. RK&A interviewed program participants 18 years and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.El Museo del Barrio
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) conducted a summative evaluation of the Gallery of California Art (Art Gallery) for the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA). The Art Gallery underwent an extensive reinstallation project, funded in part by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation. The OMCA Art Gallery reinstallation project focused on four goals: create a more welcoming, comfortable and lively Gallery of California; foster intergenerational learning; attract and engage an ethnically diverse community; and foster a personal connection between art and the visitor. The summative evaluation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Oakland Museum of California