Pre-K-12 Educators
As a teaching museum, we are committed to finding innovative approaches to teaching and learning through art, making connections across disciplines, and building literacy strategies.
Through looking closely at art objects, exchanging ideas, and creating art, participants investigate art history, artistic practices, and the issues raised by the artwork. We work closely with teachers, administrators, and homeschooling parents to shape our programs. We invite you to explore art with us, express your ideas and creativity, and consider the connections between art and our lives.
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Booking Your Visit
Everything you need to know before you come to the museum.
Interactive Guided Tours
Guided tours facilitate inquiry-based discussion of the artwork and include hands-on activities.
Multi-session Programs
Combine visits to the museum galleries with art-making and writing workshops in your classroom.
Curriculum Resources
Our educators’ guides provide resources to connect a museum visit to classroom learning.
Teachers’ Workshops
Offered to educators from all grade levels and disciplines, administrators, and home-schooling parents, we offer Professional Development Points.
Booking Your Visit
All programs are free but reservations are required for guided tours, self-guided visits, and workshops due to limited space. Please contact us at least three weeks in advance. We can reimburse your school for transportation costs up to $125 per visit for a total of seven trips per year. We are happy to help you plan the details of your visit. Call the Education Office at (413) 597-2038 or email us.
Check out our visit page for hours, directions, parking, and museum policies.
See tour descriptions below for a guided visit. Groups are welcome to tour the galleries on their own. Reservations are required. Limited to 20 students, with one chaperone for every 10 students. Please plan on dividing your class into small groups, informing students about gallery rules, and discussing artwork with your students.
Guided Tours
Tours are interactive and are conducted by our Museum Associates, Williams undergraduates trained to teach with art. Confirmation packets include standards-based educational material to assist with integrating the museum experience into the school curriculum.
Tours are offered Tuesday through Friday 10 to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 to 2 p.m. They typically run 1.5 hours.
Diversity in African Art
September 25–October 19, 2012
Elementary, Middle, and High School
Experience an introduction to the rich diversity of cultural and artistic production in traditional art from Africa. View clothing, masks, shrine figures, and other items at the center of family and community life and spiritual practices in Nigeria, Mali, and Gabon. Learn about the dynamic lives of these objects and take inspiration from their form, function, and meaning to create your own artwork.
Grids
October 2–December 7, 2012
Elementary, Middle, and High School
Consider the possibilities of the grid in making, viewing, and thinking about art. Grids can organize space and ideas. They provide a framework for patterns, categories, and relationships, as well as a platform for creativity and improvisation. This tour will draw upon essential concepts of math and mapping such as pattern, geometry, and scale, while sampling some of the ways that grids have played a role in a wide variety of artworks.
Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series
October 2–November 20, 2012
Middle and High School
This tour takes a close look at Laylah Ali’s exquisitely rendered gouache-on-paper paintings, which chronicle the dystopian world of her enigmatic green-headed figures. Her provocative imagery is open-ended, darkly humorous, and triggers a range of associations through its references to the media, historical events, and racial and gender tropes.
The Founding Documents & American Art
October 2–December 7, 2012 & February 26–May 10, 2013
Elementary, Middle, and High School
The Founding Documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Articles of the Confederation—tell the story of the country in formation. Consider these rare documents alongside exceptional examples of American art. Express yourself through art-making and text-based activities.
Founding Documents Education Guide Fall 2012 PDF
Mysteries of the Ancient World
October 2–December 7, 2012 & February 26–May 10, 2013
Middle and High School
Artifacts tell us about life in the ancient world, and yet there are many mysteries left to unfold. Students will think like archaeologists, analyzing ancient objects from the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, and Mesoamerica. Compare artistic styles from different cultures and consider how art objects were used originally and how they are seen today. Unearth the stories of these objects through writing and drawing activities.
The Mysteries of the Ancient World Educator’s Guide PDF
Storytime in the Galleries
October 2–December 7, 2012 & February 26–May 10, 2013
Preschool and Elementary School
Combine art and stories in a fun, literacy-based tour! View art in the galleries, listen to related stories, and create art projects. Topics can be tailored to your curriculum.
Art and Literature
March 5–May 10, 2013
Elementary, Middle, and High School
Words conjure images in our minds. In turn, images inspire language to express our observations and responses. This tour explores the interplay between language and art through discussion, writing, and drawing activities in the galleries.
Kidspace at WCMA: Artistic Curiosity
November 13–December 7, 2012 & February 26–April 19, 2013
Elementary, Middle, and High School
WCMA is proud to present its first Kidspace exhibition as part of the Kidspace partnership with the Clark and MASS MoCA. For select times during the 2012–13 school year, all three museums will present complementary exhibitions under the umbrella theme of curiosity. This tour at WCMA will explore artwork that reveals curious minds at work, from artists’ sketches and experiments with process to investigations inspired by natural phenomena and the unique challenges of representing inner lives. Support for the Artistic Curiosity exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art is provided by the Polly Thayer Starr Charitable Trust.
Curriculum Resources
Guides include background information on featured artists and artwork, as well as standards-based pre- and post-visit activities, bibliographies, and more. Guides are available for current tours.
Downloadable PDF curriculum guides from past tours are listed below. You can use these guides as a resource:
- African Americans and the American Scene Educator’s Guide PDF (PDF 4.5 MB)
- Asco Educator’s Guide PDF (PDF 1.1 MB)
- African Art: Who Can Dance (PDF 373 KB)
- Posing Beauty in African American Culture (PDF 152 KB)
- Photography at the Frontier of Physics and Art (PDF 274 KB)
- Mocha Dick (PDF 262 KB)
- Remington’s Bronco Buster: From Art Icon to Pop Icon (PDF 193 KB)
- Landscapes of the Mind (PDF 1.2 MB)
- Location, Location, Location (PDF 1.2 MB)
- Lincoln to the Nth Degree Tour (PDF 180 KB)
- The Abcds of Sol Lewitt (PDF 676 KB)
Explore the entire museum collection online or select an area of focus with our online education modules, which combine high-quality images of art objects with accessible background information, discussion questions, and hands-on activity suggestions. Current education modules include:
Teachers’ Workshops
Offered to educators from all grade levels and disciplines, administrators, and home schooling parents. Reservations are required. Professional Development Points (PDPs) offered. Please call the Education Office at (413) 597-2038 or email us.
Art and Literature
Friday, March 22, 2013
9:30 am– 3 pm
Reservations required. PDPs offered.
Join us for gallery discussions with curators and educators, and writing and art-making activities that explore the fascinating interplay of art and literature. We will focus on an exhibition culled from WCMA’s permanent collection, as well as Painting Between the Lines, a special exhibition showcasing the work of contemporary artists who have created paintings inspired by descriptions of imagined artworks found in a variety of literary sources, including works by Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, and Milan Kundera.
Education programs at the Williams College Museum of Art are made possible by the Eugénie Prendergast Trust. Additional support comes from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
