Tour Topics and Themes


Peer training in Galleries 374 and 375, June 15, 2022

Jean Ann Durades, Rose Stanley-Gilbert, Mary Ann Wark presented on new works on view in Rituals of Resilience and Gallery 375. These are works all by Black artists. The training is 5 videos in total.

Peer training Part 1

Peer Training Part 2

Peer Training Part 3

Peer Training Part 4

Peer Training Part 5

Here are also supporting materials from their talks, along with some additional resources provided by other guides:

From Rose:

Gio Swaby, Pretty Pretty 3, 2020 WORD

Alfred Conteh – Sauce – WORD

From Mary Ann:

mia.James Phillips Cosmic Connection 1971 2022

mia. Wangechi Mutu

and with no questions/answers: mia. object file.Intertwinedwo anwers

 

Some information on Afrofuturism from Kay Miller:

Afro-Futurism Explained

Afrofuturism Explained: Not Just Black Sci-Fi | Inverse


Cross Currents Tours

The Cross Currents tour was developed to allow more flexibility to museum visitors on the weekend. This tour is a melding of an Ask Me and a Spotlight tour assignment, and visitors are able to choose their own Mia adventure, traveling to as many tour stops as they like. As an added bonus, the Cross Currents format provides guides with a touring option that offered more engagement with visitors.

Each month, we use a different theme for the tour. The themes are broad, allowing plenty of options for selecting a key artwork or gallery to present throughout the museum.

For the tour, six to eight guides select a gallery and pick one object or a small group of objects to present around a general theme. For example, “Come to Your Senses” is a tour that explores how our senses help to tell the story of art. Guides would be stationed in their gallery for two hours and receive two credits.

The day of the tour, visitors are given a museum map with the locations of the stationed guides. Visitors move through the gallery stops in any rotation. Guides present on their object/s for about 10 minutes and then encourage visitors to move on to another stop. Additional tour maps will be available at each stop. Guides wear an “Ask Me” button and are encouraged to invite visitors to participate in the tours.

Here is a sample of the handout available to visitors on the weekends. Note this is a template that we adapt to each tour, depending on the theme and choices of the guides:

Cross Currents_Oct

The Fall 2020 CIFocus newsletter also included a great article by guide Bryan Peffer, outlining his experience of giving a Cross Currents tour:

CIFocus newsletter FALL2020