Cincinnati Bridge
The bi-annual National Docent Symposium (NDS) was held this year in Cincinnati, September 17-20. Over 500 docents and education staff of museums in Canada and the U.S. participated, including Melissa Smith and several AGO gallery guides. Melissa and GG Bev Biderman gave a presentation to a full room of over 50 delegates with the title “Talks on the Dot: Bridging the Gap for the Tour Averse” (presentation available at NDS website). Bev reports:
“Judging from the enthusiastic reception and the numerous questions we got from the audience we expect red dots to be spreading across museums in North America like measles.
“It was a packed, often exhausting, but always stimulating weekend. Lots of networking, pre-conference tours, off-site tours and dinners, breakout sessions (like ours), poster sessions, and plenary speakers. The plenary speakers talked about the need for docents to be good storytellers. They were themselves fabulous and inspiring storytellers. (Did you know that Columbia has a Master of Science programme in “Narrative Medicine” to help healthcare professionals elicit patients’ stories so they can better diagnose and treat their illnesses?)
from “The Senses are Alive and Well – Engaging with Visitors with Dementia”
“I went to two breakout sessions. One from UMich Art Museum was called “The Senses are Alive & Well” and presented highly imaginative ways of engaging with visitors with memory loss and dementia. For example, docents dressed up and humorously acted out parts to introduce art works. Interestingly, the docents receive personal information about each guest with a memory lost (Mr. Gary used to be an architect; Mr. Roth used to be an artist; he doesn’t like to be touched, etc.). In addition each docent takes personal charge of one visitor.
“Another presentation by docents from the Everson Museum in Syracuse, described their community outreach programme (to scouts and guides, nursing homes, schools, etc). They used simple art making tools (water colours, collage, etc) to connect clients to art being shown at the museum — copies of which they laminated and brought along. I came home energized and inspired!”
Cincinnati Mural
The next symposium will be in Montreal in 2017. If you want to know more, speak to Bev, or to Fran Bleviss, a Docent Symposium Council Director or to Barbara Keilhauer, both of whom also attended.