Amon Carter Docent Training Final Update

Hi everyone! 

Wow, what a challenging task it is to articulate all the things I learned from my internship at the Amon Carter in their Docent Training Program. I have a few bullet points I'd like to share from my time there to sum up the most impactful parts of my experience there.

• For several months each week, I practiced my tour stops with my peers, which gave me the invaluable opportunity to practice using museum teaching strategies in the museum galleries instead of in theory or in the studio-based art classes I teach at UNT. During these practice sessions, I also saw other approaches which helped me gather more perspective as a participant of a tour. 
• It goes without saying that I learned so much about the Amon Carter's collection of objects, their educational programmatic offerings, and the values of the institution itself. I also understand how to integrate standard museum docent standards into building my own tour, so much so that I feel knowledgeable enough about docent standards that I could apply the practices/have a well- informed starting point at any museum institution I plan to volunteer with in the future.
• The intangible, informal learning opportunities at the Amon Carter were rich and plentiful! Building relationships with populations outside of academia was so rewarding. I learned not just about the Amon Carter's collection, but about how each area of their educational department collaborates to bring the local community into the museum, whether physically bringing them in, seeking them out, or ensuring they are represented more in the space. After learning about their library, I have recommended so many of my artist friends and students to get out there and utilize this amazing resource! 
• Balancing both the macro and micro when it comes to building a tour. By macro I mean the overall theme and ideas of the tour and by micro I mean the individual objects themselves and all of the various contextual information that supports the tour theme. I am very detail oriented by nature and often get caught up in the process or details of something, so it was a challenge to return to the macro. I began to see it as a gift though, not something confining or overwhelming, but more like something to return to find connections between pieces that seem so unrelated.
• Working behind the scenes, I got a sense of how the Amon Carter is working tirelessly behind the scenes to transform the way their collection is presented to visitors. Operations at a museum work SLOWLY, but they are trying to make things happen as quickly as they can! One example is they do not hang a group of works solely by its chronology, type of work, or artist. The work is displayed thematically and in such a way that viewers can make connections between work made hundreds of years ago and work being made today by contemporary artists. I believe this kind of thoughtful curation and design results in our ability to interpret and contribute to the future of art objects, too.
• The Amon Carter houses a large collection of works depicting Indigenous populations that is romanticized, discriminatory, historically incorrect, or told from the perspective of colonizers. In all education departments, this is addressed to inform the way educators and docents talk about those objects. Things like awareness of language, being sensitive to how a patron may identify, and the white washed lenses for which these works are often viewed through are all things we discussed in my docent training and educational sessions I attended. 

Thank you for reading and wishing you all the best as you continue on in your program or enter the work force! This is my last semester in the Graduate Art Museum Edu Cert program, I have loved getting to know so many of you this semester. Stay in touch, can't wait to see all the awesome work you all do in the future! I hope to see you at the AC when I am volunteering one day :)

Kay