English composition and creative writing students get assignments based on works in the museum. In the introductory and advanced poetry writing classes, I read poems about paintings, and the students explore the relationship between poetry and visual art. They learn how to use art, and then they write poems about paintings that are in the museum. Professors make special requests for pieces to be brought out for viewing from collection storage. Anthropology and history students have researched artifacts.
Faculty use actual artifacts as teaching tools.
When research is shared with museum staff, that information is used to improve exhibits and comes full circle back to museum visitors. Professor Brigid Barton regularly requests that museum staff get prints out from the museum's art vault for a connoisseurship workshop in the Art History Seminar. Then students analyze etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts by Goya, D rer, Bonnard, and other masters. With mere inches between the students and the works, this can be a breathtaking experience. Art history student Elizabeth Forsythe, working as an intern with museum Curator JoAnne Northrup, put together a small landscape exhibition from the museum's collection, and other students have assisted Barton when she curated an exhibition of contemporary prints at the de Saisset.