I feel like I may be suffering from multiple personality disorder. Within me I have the museum visitor, the museum studies student and the teacher. After reading the MIT forum, I was reminded of all of the assignments I have created from my students based upon museum websites and on-line sources. I have had my students go on virtual visits to museums and review the sites. One very successful assignment was part of a museum visit field trip to New York City that I took my Art History students on a couple of summers ago. I asked my students to each select one work of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's on-line collections data base and one from the Museum of Modern Art's on-line collections data base. The objective of the assignment was to research a work of art they were interested in before we visited the museum and then give a gallery talk about the work of art once they found it in the museum and had the chance to see it in person.
I must say this was an extremely dedicated and motivated group of students. They had to prepare this assignment in advance (over their summer vacation - the majority of them had just graduated) in order to give their gallery talks on their selected work of art in the museums. They took it seriously, utilized the on-line sources and gave excellent presentations to our group.
As a teacher, as a student and as a museum visitor I realize that the digitization of museum collections is an invaluable resource and provides many with the opportunity to see exhibits and works of art they may never have the opportunity to see in person. I just want to be able to see the actual work or art in person when I go to a museum. And I hope that people will continue to go to museums in person and use the on-line resources to prepare for their visits and follow-up on their visits afterwords.
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