Online Teacher Resources on preparing your Students for a Visit to the Museum



1. Explain to your students what a museum is and what collections are:

  • A museum is a place that contains collections of objects. It’s a place where the people who work there see to it that the objects are cared for, studied, and put on display so visitors can admire them and learn from them. There are all kinds of museums in a city: art museums, contemporary art museums, science museums, history museums, natural history museums, architecture museums. Each type of museum collects specific kinds of objects. Botanical gardens, insectariums, aquariums and zoos are also considered to be museums because they have living collections.

A gallery of decorative arts at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
  • The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is an art museum. It has an encyclopaedic collection. In other words, it has a collection of art objects that come from the four corners of the world and from all major historical periods. In our collections, you will find paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and decorative arts such as furniture, ceramics, and textiles.

The facade of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion
at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

  • Collections are groups of things gathered together that share certain similarities. In museums these things are systematically categorized according to where they come from, or from what historical period they date. They can also be categorized according to theme, for instance it would be possible to have an exhibition of objects that represent animals. Ask your students if they have collections.
  • Museums have collections they put on display, which we call permanent collections. They also organize temporary exhibitions, where they borrow objects from other museums or collectors to display for a limited period.

The introduction to a temporary exhibition on
the Canadian artist James Wilson Morrice

2. Present a General Description of the Activity that you Reserved

    For the descriptions of the activities offered this year, see: http://www.mmfa.qc.ca/en/activites/eleves.html

3. How to Behave in a Museum

Spend some time in your class telling your students how they should behave in a museum. Give them the reasons why we ask visitors to behave responsibly:

Because we want our collections to be conserved for future generations, we take special care of them. Some are put in glass cases, others are not. Galleries where the objects are on display are controlled for temperature and humidity. We also ask our visitors to be careful in the galleries. Here are the rules we ask people to follow:

  • Don’t touch the objects: Touching may damage the works
  • Keep a safe distance between you and the objects: So you avoid coming into contact with them
  • Don’t point at an object with a pen or pencil: You might accidentally mark it
  • Don’t run and play or be boisterous in the galleries: It’s not safe for you or the objects
  • Don’t eat in the galleries: It’s not safe for the objects
  • Don’t lean on or touch the display cases: It might disturb the object in the case, and it will also dirty the glass, making it difficult for people to see.
  • Copy this PDF file for an amusing cartoon with which your students can prepare themselves for the rules at the Museum. Click on the Museum Etiquette Drawing:

    http://www.mmfa.qc.ca/en/activites/enseignants/pv/index.html

4. Hands-on Activity to Prepare your Students for their Visit:

  • Make fancy name tags:

    Using small pieces of card, have the students make fancy name tags by writing their first names and decorating the tags with coloured patterns. Make them big enough so that the museum educators or guides will be able to read them from a distance. You can use as inspiration motifs that can be found on objects from our collections from a variety of cultures. Have your students draw patterns such as these to decorate the borders of their name tags:

Dish
Indonesia, Irian Jaya, Lake Sentani
Melanesia
Dish in shape of a shield
19th - 20th c.
Carved, painted wood
1949.Pc.8

Rain hat
Attributed to Charles Edenshaw
Skidegate (Queen Charlotte Islands) about 1839 - Masset 1920
About 1890
Braided spruce roots
1949.50.Ab.1

Vase with human features
Peru, south coast
Early intermediate
(200 B.C. - 600 A.D.)
Nasca culture
500 - 600 A.D.
Terra cotta with polychrome painted decoration
1956.Dp.8

Plate
Turkey, Iznik
Ottoman period (1281-1923)
About 1575
Earthenware, polychrome underglaze decoration
1939.Dp.18

Pearled calabash
Cameroon, western savannah
? Bamum culture
20th c.
Calabash, pearls, raffia, wood, string
1975.F.120

Bottle vase
China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen
Qing dynasty (1644-1912) Kangxi period (1662-1722)
Bottle vase
End of 17th, beginning of 18th c.
Painted porcelain with blue underglaze, silver-plated metal and cork
1982.Ed.14

  • For Younger Children: Make a mini-museum

    Have your students make a mini-museum in small shoe or pastry boxes. Have the children make them individually or use a larger box for a group effort. Have each child do small coloured drawings on little squares and rectangles of paper with coloured markers. They can also do little sculptures in Plasticine. Line the boxes with coloured papers for the walls. Cut out a door and decorate the outside walls as well. Paste the little "paintings" on the walls and display the little sculptures on the floor of your mini-museums. Put your mini-museums on display in your classroom.

  • For Older Children: Be a Budding Museologist

    Have the students bring in an object that has some significance for them from home. It can be something as simple as an interesting rock, seashell or article of clothing. Have them document the object as a museum would when a new object is acquired.

    • Document it visually by drawing it in as much detail as possible.
    • Measure it.
    • Describe it in full detail.
    • Write a paragraph on its history and provenance.
    • Write a label for it as if it were going on display. Include on the label who it was made by (if it is not a natural object) and what year it was made, give it a title, say what material it’s made of and finally write down the collector’s name or its provenance. Use the label format below to help you.
    • Have a "show and tell" day with the documented objects.

- Artist or maker
- Year of birth and year of death of artist or maker
- Title and year object was made
- Materials
- Dimensions of object
- Provenance (where it’s from)

5. Divide your class into two teams of 15 and Arrange to have One Adult for Each Team

The ratio of students per museum educator is 1/15. Make sure that you have enough parent volunteers to help you supervise the teams.

So no time is lost once you arrive at the Museum for your activity, divide your class or classes into teams of 15 at your school before the visit. This way, the students will know which team they’ll be in for their activity.

Have a great visit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts!