Joslyn’s Kent Bellows Mentoring Program (KBMP) provides studio space and artistic mentorship to over 80 teens in the Omaha area. Three semesters per year, high school students in the after school program are paired with professional artists to gain technical skills, explore their creative vision, and make art. KBMP…
Six times during the school year, a group of teachers meet at Joslyn to study an artist and their artwork to create a lesson plan for Thursdays for Teachers (T4T). Who are these wonderful educators responsible for collaborating with Museum staff to create the curriculum? They are our Mentor…
Four years ago I met Julie Dierberger with University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Service Learning Academy (SLA) and Cathy Nelson with Blackburn Alternative High School. Little did I know that this partnership (and subsequent friendship) would lead to Joslyn Art Museum installing a life-size Truffula Tree in the Discovery…
Did you know that Joslyn visits Nebraska Medicine every month to offer Museum-related activities for pediatric patients? Art is sWELL encourages children who are able to make their way to a common room, to gather along with family members to look at images of artworks from Joslyn’s permanent collections…
In museum circles there’s much buzz over Ellen Gamermanʼs recent Wall Street Journal article, “Docents Gone Wild.” In her cautionary piece, Gamerman describes the occasional rogue docent whose performance in the galleries does not measure up to museum expectations—the greying, privileged volunteer who strays off script, misstates facts, or…
While friends of mine who teach in traditional learning environments wind down their school year, I begin to brace myself for the summer ahead. I alter my social media settings to avoid seeing too many mid-day pool parties and I begin to set my alarm clock a little earlier….
Joslyn Art Museum serves as an educational resource for the entire greater metropolitan area, including Southwest Iowa. As such, this spring, we welcomed every second grade student from the Council Bluffs School District — nearly 700 children from eleven school buildings — for a docent-guided tour called Parts of…
Bad Country, good food, inspiring art, and more importantly over 225 people gathered to support the Kent Bellows Mentoring Program and made Wishbone 2015 a great success. The Kent Bellows Mentoring Program empowers high school students to explore their artistic talents through a mentoring relationship with professional artists. The…
Last September, twenty Karen students – most from camps along the Thai-Burma border and all now attending Benson High School and part of Omaha Public Schools’ ESL/Refugee and Migrant Education program – made Joslyn Art Museum their home. The students participated in a five-day quilt workshop during National…
It’s rare when most of Joslyn’s education staff calendars align, but when they do we make the most of it. This year we traveled to the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) to meet with their education staff and view their collections and exhibitions. Meet Joslyn’s Education Department Front row,…