Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Docent Guild Mission Statement
The Docent Guild supports the educational mission of the Lowe Art Museum by providing a corps of trained guides to give group tours. The Docent Guild also functions as a support group by promoting interest in the Museum and by volunteering assistance with its educational programs. The Docent Guild:

Provides training to community volunteers to enable them to guide groups of young people and adults who visit the Museum.
Provides continuing education opportunities in art and art history for its membership.
Provides opportunities for cultural enrichment through its support of the Museum, its exhibitions, lectures and other activities.
The Guild works with the Curator of Education and the Museum staff to broaden the educational outreach of the University of Miami to the Miami-Dade community.
The Lowe Art Museum Docent Guild is over 30 years old and offers an intensive 9-month training program in art history and museum education theory and techniques for all docents. Recruitment of new docents takes place each summer to begin training in September of each year.

The goal of education at the Lowe Art Museum is to facilitate exploration of the visual arts. All educational opportunities, whether led by museum staff, museum volunteers or guests strive to challenge the visitor to engage (individually or as a group) in a learning process utilizing and encouraging critical inquiry, object-based education and visual literacy. Overall education at the Lowe Art Museum intends to provide visitors with the necessary skills to explore the visual arts inside and outside of the museum, to instill a sense of excitement about art among our visitors, and to build lasting relationships between our community and our collections.

The Lowe Art Museum Docent Guild supports the mission of the education department by providing a corps of trained volunteer guides (docents) to lead group tours for museum visitors. Docents present tours using inquiry-based strategies. An inquiry-based approach uses questions to help people learn. Inquiry-based learning and teaching allows learners to participate in the education experience, opportunity for rich exploration, as well as, multiple perspectives and ideas. The Lowe Art Museum often uses Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) [ www.vue.org ], a method of inquiry, for K-12 and college tours due to its student-centered approach, its emphasis on constructivist theory, skill building and aesthetic development.

With over 17,500 objects in our permanent collection, the Lowe’s exhibitions represent 5,000 years of art history throughout the world. Our collections enhance and support a multidisciplinary curriculum from pre-K through college. In addition the Lowe Art Museum installs several temporary and traveling exhibitions each year.

The Lowe Art Museum Docent Guild has been serving the educational mission of the museum since 1972. There are now 75 members in various levels of training and guiding. Last year the Guild guided over 8,000 visitors through the museum.

Docent Guild Open House FREE information session
thursday July 15, 2010 at 2:00pm
please rsvp to Jodi Sypher, Curator of Education: jsypher@miami.edu