About Kris Wetterlund

Kris is a founder of Museum-Ed, a not-for-profit professional organization that strives to meet the needs of museum educators by providing tools and resources by and for the museum education community. She currently serves as Editor of the Museum-Ed Listserv and Website. Wetterlund has worked with teachers as an art museum educator for the past sixteen years, in the education department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and as Director of Education at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. She has served as team leader in the St. Paul Public Schools' writing of elementary art curriculum. She also served for ten years as museum education representative on the governing board of Art Educators of Minnesota, the state's professional organization for art teachers. Online art educational resources authored by Wetterlund include the award-winning Get the Picture: Thinking about Photographs and more recently the Walters Art Museum's Integrating the Arts: Mummies, Manuscripts and Madonnas.
 

Session Description

Writing for technology is a very broad topic, but it also can be liberating as it often allows the educator to tell the story of an object in an arena outside of museum galleries. This session will draw from digital storytelling techniques and examples from writing for specific technology applications like Pachyderm. Storyboarding for interactive applications will also be covered.
 

About Peter Stevenson

Peter’s areas of expertise include exhibition and public program development, interpretive planning, audio and multimedia script writing, interactive media production and digital strategy. He brings a strong multidisciplinary approach to his clients’ projects and is adept at creating cohesive stories and strengthening the connections between people and the places they visit. Peter has served in various educational and interpretive capacities at leading cultural institutions, including The Field Museum in Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In addition, he has worked with dozens of cultural heritage sites, tourist destinations and museums across the U.S. and Canada in the development of audio and multimedia tours. His projects have won three MUSE awards from the American Association of Museums and the first-ever 1st place awarded to a handheld multimedia project at the 2007 National Association for Interpretation NAI Media Awards. Peter holds a master’s degree in art history and is a previous Fulbright Fellow.
 

Session Description

Writing audio tour scripts means unlearning the habits of written language and composing for the ear. In this session, we will focus on strategies for writing scripts that are meant to be spoken and heard, not read. We will also address interview preparation and techniques, integrating interviews into your script, as well as the nuts and bolts of recording.
 

About Scott Sayre

Scott has over fifteen years of experience guiding museums in the selection, development and application of educational and business technologies. He has spoken internationally and provided consultation to a range of museums. From 1991 - 2002 he was the Director of Media and Technology at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. There he formed and led the museum’s Interactive Media Group. Scott is the current Chair of the Pachyderm Governance Council. Sayre has also served as the Chair of the American Association of Museums' Media and Technology professional committee. He has a Doctorate in Education from the University of Minnesota and also holds a M.Ed. in Training and a B.A. in Visual Communications Technology.
 

Session Description

Audio tours and cell phone tours have a lot in common. They both use scripts that are written for the ear. But there are important differences too, and this session will address the do-it-yourself nature of cell phone audio tours, writing scripts for the cell phone, programming your tour and more.
 

About Philip Yenawine

Philip Yenawine is co founder (with cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen) of Visual Understanding in Education (VUE), a non profit educational research organization that develops and studies ways teaching visual literacy and of using art to teach thinking and communication skills.

Director of Education at The Museum of Modern Art from 1983-93, Yenawine has also held positions as director of education at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; director of museum programs at South Street Seaport Museum, New York; and associate museum educator-in-charge, Department of High School Programs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Yenawine is the author of an introduction to modern art, called How to Look at Modern Art, and has written six children's books about art -- Stories, Colors, Lines, Shapes, People and Places. Key Art Terms for Beginners was published in 1995. He was an editor of Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America. He is co-author with Abigail Housen of Visual Thinking Strategies, an art based elementary curriculum.

His contributions have been recognized within the arts community by the National Art Education Association Award for Distinguished Service, 1993; National Art Education Association Museum Educator of the Year, 1991; New York State Governor's Award for Visual AIDS and A Day Without Art, 1990; New York State Governor's Award for The Museum of Modern Art's program for people with hearing disabilities, 1984. Additionally he was made a George A. Miller Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois, 1996 and awarded a Doctorate of Fine Art, Honoris Causa, from the Kansas City Art Institute, 2003.
 

Session Description

Data shows that label-reading art museum visitors are still learning how to look and make sense out of a variety of art. And that a great deal of their reading outside the museum focuses on magazines and newspapers. What can we learn about the needs of our viewers from Abigail Housen's research? And what from looking at how good journalists write? During this short session, we'll quickly address both. Prerequisite: read Thoughts on Writing (Yenawine); study copies of recent issues of your local newspaper, Time, Newsweek and the National Geographic.
 

About Michelle Grohe

Michelle has worked with schools and teachers as an art museum educator for the past 8 years. She is currently the Director of School and Teacher Programs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, where she oversees the School Partnership Program.

Recently, she has been applying the lessons learned from the Gardner's Thinking Through Art research project towards transforming teacher programs, curriculum, and docent training, focusing particularly on new programs for middle and high schools. Michelle has co-authored articles about changes to the curriculum and structure of the Gardner's School Partnership, including Reimagining School Programs in the winter 2009 volume of Visual Arts Research. She earned her Masters in Art Education for Museums from the Rhode Island School of Design and has worked at the Montclair Art Museum and the Addison Gallery of American Art at Philips Academy, Andover.
 

Session Description

Although a majority of activities in art museum galleries with students focus on group discussion, writing exercises may provide students with another form of expression, while giving museum and classroom educators a mode to assess the students' understanding. This session will explore various independent and group writing activities with middle and high school students, including examples for use in the museum galleries and the classroom. Assessment strategies will also be addressed.
 

About Your Presenter

Laura Zabel is the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts. Springboard for the Arts is a national leader in the field of artist service and provides arts focused economic, business and career development services for artists of all disciplines and at all stages of their careers. Since 1978, Springboard has served more than 60,000 artists and cultural organizations throughout the upper Midwest. At Springboard, Laura works with arts organizations on issues such as strategic planning, board development, fundraising and non-profit start-up. Laura’s organizational work is focused on nuts and bolts planning with small to mid-sized organizations and on helping groups create new, effective organizational models.
 

Session Description

This session is designed to help small and mid-sized museums to understand and prepare strong grant applications. You’ll learn how to research grant opportunities, organize your application, prepare your work sample, and write a compelling narrative.