Schools and the Museum: Working Together

Learning about the world and its people through art can be a joyful experience to share with your students!

The educational programs at the Johnson Museum are a resource for your classes—to link with and enrich your curricula in art, global studies, and language arts. The Museum regularly serves schools from Ithaca and the surrounding areas. We offer programs based on our global permanent collection and special exhibitions. Students learn about the art through activities such as gallery games, object study, drawing, writing, discussion, and studio workshops.

Join us for a Thematic Tour (such as "Animals in Art" or "It's Polite to Stare at These Faces," a look at the Museum's portraits), one of our seven OMNI programs, an in-depth look at a current special exhibition, or let us custom-fit a tour and activities to the needs of your class.

These programs are supported in part through the courtesy of the NEA, New York State Council on the Arts, Arts in Education, the J. M. McDonald Foundation, and Freedom Forum Foundation

Our calendar does fill up quickly during the school year, so we encourage you to book well in advance.

For more information on these and other school programs, fees, and scheduling information, please contact the coordinator of school and family programs at (607) 254-4654.

Objects and their Makers–New Insights (OMNI)

OMNI is a series of object-based learning units designed for a specific grade level and focusing on a culture represented in the Johnson Museum's global art collection. The units were developed by Museum education staff with area schools and Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga BOCES.

When you participate, Museum staff will come to your classroom and introduce the unit with a slide presentation. They will also bring a study case to keep in your classroom for your students to explore for four weeks. The study case contains artifacts from the culture, games, clothing, videos, books, musical instruments, maps, slides, audio tapes, museum labels, and a teacher's notebook with lesson plans and resources.

During the four-week period, your class will come to the Museum where they will join in gallery activities focused on objects from the specific culture in the collection. Students will participate in an artist-led studio workshop.

The seven OMNI units are:

Africa: The Dogon of Mali (developed for Grade 3)

China: Then and Now (developed for Grade 3 with support from the East Asia Program at Cornell)

Pre-Columbian Latin American Art (developed for Grade 5 with support from the Latin American Studies Program at Cornell)

Native American Art (developed for Grade 7)

The Arts of Japan: A Window to a Culture (developed for Grade 9 with support from the East Asia Program at Cornell)

The Arts of Southeast Asia (developed for Grade 9 with support from the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell)

The Arts of Tibet (developed for Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 with support from the East Asia Program at Cornell)

 

Major funding for the OMNI program has been provided by the Sheila Hearne Endowment.

Additional support has been provided by Dorothy and Thomas Litwin, June and Leon Holt, Kathleen and William Cavanaugh, the National Endowment for the Arts, Genevieve and Richard Tucker, the J. M. McDonald Foundation, Inc., and the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

For fee schedule and more information about this or any of the Museum's School and Family Programs, please contact the coordinator at (607) 254-4654.

 

Kids Discover the Trail! is a collaboration between Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI),  Ithaca City School District (ICSD), and the Discovery Trail that brings every ICSD student in Pre-K through Grade 5 to the eight Discovery Trail organizations over the course of their elementary school years. More than 90% of the district’s elementary classes participate in the program, which combines classroom activities with field trips to the Discovery Trail sites.

Visit the program website for a complete introduction as well as links to a wiki site highlighting "best practices" of school and museum educators involved with Kids Discover the Trail!

Kids Discover the Trail! provides curriculum-based field trips to the eight sites of the Discovery Trail (Cayuga Nature Center, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell Plantations, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, The History Center in Tompkins County, Museum of the Earth at PRI, Sciencenter, and Tompkins County Public Library) for ICSD students in grades Pre-K to 5. Classrooms from different ICSD elementary schools are partnered to increase opportunities for students and families from different neighborhoods to get to know each other.

This program is funded by gifts from local foundations, businesses and community members made to the IPEI; by gifts to the eight Discovery Trail organizations; and is supported by ICSD. This year's overall Program Sponsor is BorgWarner Morse TEC.

For more information please email ipei_at_ipei.org or call (607) 256-4734.

 

Cornell's East Hill Notes with Gary Stewart visited the Johnson to hear more about the OMNI program and Kids Discover the Trail!