About Academic Programs

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Photograph of an Amherst College professor and the Mead Art Museum's Head of Education with three students teaching and learning in the galleries of the Mead.

The Mead Art Museum is a site for dynamic and experiential interactions between communities, curricula, and collections. Our dedicated Academic Programs offer faculty the opportunity to extend their classroom into the museum with curricular experiences across disciplines and topics. Work with our Curator of Academic Programs, Emily Potter-Ndiaye, to design a one-time visit or assignment, or semester-long course partnership for your course. All disciplines are welcome!

Our Program Offerings:

We draw from the 20,000+ objects in the collections and current exhibitions and have experience in pedagogical strategies from the field of museum education. We also embrace experimentation and always build from our faculty partners' learning objectives for their courses, resulting in a true variety of assignments and curricula. Most of our programs fall into one of these rough formats:

Schedule Your Class Visit:

Email Emily Potter-Ndiaye with as much preliminary information as you have, ie:

  • Your class title, topic, and number of students (anticipated)
  • Your preferred date(s) and time(s)
  • Your main learning objective(s) for the museum session
  • Anything you know about the artworks or what types of artworks you'd like to use. (Less is more! We advise between 3 and 6 objects/class, with exceptions for large classes or particular pedagogical reasons). Please note depending on the size and condition of the artwork, we may not be able to pull all of your selections.

Emily or Mila will reply to confirm the date and set up a 30-minute call to plan the logistics, agenda, and artwork for your session.