The authors seek to investigate whether studying the arts makes people more creative, and by extension, whether studying the arts builds creative thinking skills that can be deployed outside the arts. They do so through a series of meta-analyses examining existing literature, and find that the presence of an association between studying the arts and creative thinking depends on experimental design and the form of creativity measured.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Erik MogaKristin BurgerLois HetlandEllen Winner
This article aims to discover evidence for the "Mozart Effect"--the observation that listening to music for brief periods temporarily enhances performance on spatial tasks.
The author reviews the empirical literature testing that there is an association between instruction in music (usually school-based) and performance in reading (as measured by reading test scores or by general tests of verbal aptitude).
In the following pages I describe what happens when an exhibit dense in local meanings enters the national arena. The Yup'ik mask exhibit Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer) began as visual repatriation—bringing objects out of museums back into a local context—and ended as a tribal exhibit displayed in three very different majority institutions, including an American Indian museum, a natural history museum, and an art museum. The mask exhibit was developed as a three-way collaboration between Yup'ik community members, an anthropologist, and museum professionals. As it traveled farther
The contemporary approach to art education focuses on content that is derived from a broad range of the visual arts with an emphasis on what can be learned from works of art. This is a significant departure from earlier aesthetic approaches which led to purely formalist criticism in the classroom. Based on the work of Arthur Danto, the author proposes that teachers develop student abilities to go beyond the visual level of artworks and enable them to gain access to the complexity of meanings that works of art possess. To exemplify this practice, an analysis of Adrian Piper's work entitled I
A unique afterschool class in making comic strips and comic books, taught by a professional comic artist, encourages both literacy development and identity development in adolescent participants.
Dance classes provide a model for afterschool and in-school education where multiple, “embodied” modes of teaching and learning enhance development and where risk-taking is rewarded rather than punished.
This paper outlines theoretical foundations, methodology, and key findings from a membership survey conducted by the San Antonio Museum Association in 1987. The study was designed to provide insights to a variety of assumptions upon which the Association's membership management and marketing strategies were based. Central among the questions to be answered were the determination of the motivations expressed by members for joining the Association and forecasting potential changes in member program preference and member attendance patterns.
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James D. BigleyDaniel R. FesenmaierMark LaneWesley S. Roehl
In this paper, Robert C. Webb, of Suffolk University, presents literature related to much-debated topic about using music in an exhibit. In particular, Webb discusses four topics of interest to museum professionals: (1) the complexity of the term "background music" (2) the roles and uses of mood created by music (3) the use of music to cue appropriate behavior and perceptions and (4) the influence of background music on the comprehension of verbal material.
In this article, M. Hagedorn-Saupe discusses visitor-related research efforts at the Institute fur Museumskunde in Berlin. Hagedorn-Saupe provides an overview of data collection studies on museum visits and related projects, visitor research projects and collaboration with other institutions, and long-term projects at the Institute.
In this article, Gillian McIntyre, Adult Program Coordinator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, analyzes the successes and challenges of the Gallery's "In Your Face: the people's portrait project" exhibit. The goal of this exhibition was to create a gallery made entirely by and for the public. Visitors submitted postcard-sized portraits in any medium of their choice including writing. McIntyre explores the public response, exhibition design, achievements, and obstacles associated with this experimental exhibit design.