Museum Musings
Museum Education Interviews, Reviews, and Spotlights: from the galleries to your inbox.
Elizabeth Downing was the University Museum’s AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associate this Summer 2023! Elizabeth is a senior Arabic major at the University of Mississippi and has been volunteering in multiple different programs at the Museum since the beginning of this Spring.
Summer 2023 Fantastic Storyteller Campers during their Morning Photo Excursion to the 1939 Mary Buie Museum historic portico entrance.
What was your favorite Museum Summer Memory of 2023?
My favorite memory from this summer at the UM Museum was teaching the first week of summer camp, Fantastic Storytellers. I was so excited to kick off the summer with an awesome camp full of fun art projects and wonderful students. My favorite project from that week was the photo journals the students made. It gave them the chance to learn a little bit about photography and how to tell a story through pictures.
Share a valuable lesson you learned this Summer as the Museum Education’s VISTA Summer Associate.
This summer gave me the chance to learn about the importance of education through art. There are many ways students can learn about history, culture, and other topics through art. I believe pairing lessons with an art activity solidifies the information in the student’s memory making it a great learning tool.
One way we did this over the summer was through our World Explorers camp. Each day of camp the students learned about a new country or region of the world. After learning about the countries the students would do art projects related to the country of the day. By the end of the week, students were able to locate the countries on a map and name cultural facts about the places they had learned about.
Tell us about a piece that fascinates you in our collection.
A piece that fascinates me in the UM Museum’s collection is Georgia O’Keeffe’s Untitled (Abstraction, Lake George). It is exciting to see a piece by an artist that had such a significant impact in the American Modern Art movement displayed in our Museum.
Why should people visit the UM Museum?
I always encourage people to visit the UM Museum because it is a free and easily accessible place. You can view a wide variety of exhibits in one place: from Southern Folk Art to American Modern Art, and from Greek Antiquities to 19th Century Scientific Instruments, there is something for everyone to enjoy.
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