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TEACHING
IN THE
ART MUSEUM
Interpretation
as Experience

Rika B u r n h a m
a n d Elliott K a i - K e e

The J. Paul Getty Museum

Los Angeles
© 2011 J. Paul Getty Trust

Foreword © 2011 Maxine Greene

P u b l i s h e d by the J . P a u l Getty M u s e u m , L o s A n g e l e s

Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500
Los Angeles, California 90049-1682
www.gettypublications.org

A n n L u c k e MANAGING E D I T O R
Stuart Smith D E S I G N E R
Anita Keys P R O D U C T I O N C O O R D I N A T O R

C O N S U L T I N G E D I T O R Christopher Caines

Printed in China

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burnham, Rika.
Teaching in the art museum: interpretation as experience / Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60606-058-2 (pbk.)
1. Art museums—Educational aspects. 2. Art—Study and teaching. I. Kai-Kee, Elliott. II. Title.
III. Title: Interpretation as experience.
N 4 3 0 . B 8 6 2011
708.0071—DC22
2010037002

Some of the essays included in this volume were previously published in somewhat different
versions; the authors make grateful acknowledgment to the editors of the following:
"The Art of Teaching in the Museum." Journal of Aesthetic Education 39, no. 1 (Spring 2005).
© 2005 by the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University
of Illinois Press.
"Gallery Teaching as Guided Interpretation: Museum Education Practice and Hermeneutic
Theory." In Pat Villeneuve, ed., From Periphery to Center: Art Museum Education in the 21st Century.
Reston, Va.: National Art Education Association, 2007. © 2008. Used with permission of the
National Art Education Association.
"The Barnes Foundation: A Place for Teaching." Journal of Museum Education 32, no. 3
(Fall 2007). © is held by Museum Education Roundtable, for whom Left Coast Press, Inc., adminis-
ters rights.
"Museum Education and the Project of Interpretation in the Twenty-First Century." Journal
of Aesthetic Education 41, no. 2 (Summer 2007). © 2005 by the Board of Trustees at the University
of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.

C O V E R : Gallery view of participants in The Observant Eye program taught by Rika Burnham in the
special exhibition "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900," at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.
The class is discussing John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, on loan from the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photograph by Jackie Neale Chadwick, Department of Digital Media.
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Used by permission.

F R O N T I S P I E C E : The Barnes Foundation, Gallery II, east wall, with El Greco's Vision of Saint
Hyacinth, ca. 1605-10, detail. BF 876, Photographs Collection, The Barnes Foundation Archives,
Merion, PA. Reprinted by permission.
 6
QUESTIONING THE USE
OF QUESTIONS
Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee

We believe that visitors to museums will have enlightening experiences with works
of art if they are given the time, opportunity, and guidance they need to do so. In the
classes we teach, we guide our visitors with what we know, but we always remain open
to new possibilities, for we believe that the most memorable understandings of art-
works are those that visitors construct themselves. Our classes take place in museum
galleries with teacher and participants looking intently side by side, sharing ideas and
observations about a work of art. The work of art itself opens, guides, and closes these
dialogues. As gallery teachers, we support a dialogical approach to interpreting art-
works that encourages discovery. We provide art-historical information and critical
perspectives as needed, in support of speculations shared by our visitors. Our goal is for
each class to unfold an understanding of the artwork we view together, and to develop
interpretations, if only temporary and provisional, that prove resonant and satisfying
for both teacher and visitors.

94 In the twenty-first century few would argue that any work of art may ever be
defined by a single truth; each work in a museum lives surrounded by an invisible halo
of multiple interpretations, including those that visitors construct. We believe that
effective gallery teaching provides uniquely open forums in which interpretations may
unfold dialogically. "Dialogue," writes William Isaacs, "is the art of thinking together,"
and indeed talking in museums allows us to think together about works of art, in order
to see more and know more.1 The dialogues we share with visitors flow toward shared
understandings of each artwork we examine in a cooperative, reciprocal enterprise
based on trust and respect. In our gallery teaching, we learn as much from visitors
as they learn from us. Our dialogues are charged with urgency, because in the very
activity of dialogue, works of art reveal themselves in ways that often remain hidden
from a solitary viewer.
Every artwork we look at exists on an infinite horizon of possible interpretations.2
In the moment we begin to speak about it, that horizon of interpretation begins to
contract. Every piece of information we present to a group of viewers—every idea,
every point of view—changes and limits the way the participants see the work of art
and interpret it. This is a crucial understanding for gallery teachers, who must learn to
offer information and their own ideas carefully, aware of their power to constrict the
interpretive process. We believe that we need now to learn to treat questions in the
same way: critically, and with caution.
As we engage in dialogue, we invite our students and visitors to bring their eyes
and minds and "lived lives" to the study of works of art.3 Visitors need to come to an
understanding of an artwork in a spirit of freedom and play, asking along the way the
questions they themselves need to ask. Their questions are pressing, and none of them
can be preconstructed or should be dismissed by us.

E m m a had once before visited the r e n o w n e d art m u s e u m in Minneapolis, w h e r e she lives

w i t h her family, but her first school visit to the m u s e u m was s o m e t h i n g she had really

b e e n looking forward to. She h a d b e e n taking art classes for nearly two years in middle

school and didn't agree with her mother that the science m u s e u m was more interesting.

W h e n asked later how she had enjoyed her visit to the art m u s e u m , she hesitated for a

m i n u t e and said, "Oh, the m u s e u m was beautiful. I loved the paintings w e saw. But I'm

c o n f u s e d — a l l they did was ask us questions!"

Emma was right to be confused, for she and her classmates had experienced their
field trip to the museum more as a stand-up oral quiz than as an opportunity to exercise
their curiosity and imagination. The students' experience had been predetermined by
the gallery teacher's prepared script of questions. It was his questions that mapped
the pathway of exploration, his questions that shaped the discussion. "Nobody was
interested in my questions," said Emma.
In this essay we question the use of questions that dominates current museum
teaching. As they are commonly used today in our galleries, questions all too often reflect
the interests, agenda, and priorities of the instructor asking them, not the curiosity of vis-
itors in search of their own understandings. We contend that visitors should be allowed
to speculate, think, observe, muse, reflect, imagine, and question as their own hearts and
 minds lead them. Only they themselves can chart these pathways. In truly open dialogue,
we as instructors function as our groups' coexplorers, not their inquisitors.
Emma's experience is the norm rather than the exception in many museums,
where on any given day countless questions are posed to students and visitors. At
the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, in front of Jan Brueghel the Elder's The
Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark, a gallery teacher asks her elementary school
students, "Why do you think all of these animals are gathered together?" Three thou-
sand miles across the country, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, another teacher is
asking a group of high school students as they peer intently at one of Rembrandt's self-
portraits, "How can you tell that Rembrandt's fortunes have declined?" Both ques-
tions reflect the teacher's agenda, and neither question arises naturally from within
the group's discussion.

Q u e s t i o n s in the C l a s s r o o m
Questions have, of course, long played an important role in the American classroom.
All teachers routinely ask students to recall information.4 Educators since at least the
1950s have periodically called for teachers to use questions to encourage problem solv-
ing and critical thinking rather than rote memorization. With the development of so-
called inquiry and discovery curricula in the 1950s and 1960s, school educators came
to focus on questions that would "prompt thought" and "trigger thinking."5
As part of a large-scale research effort to describe and define "student thinking,"
educators and researchers produced a number of classification systems, in varying
degrees of complexity. The best known is the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:
The Classification of Educational Goals, proposed by the educational psycholo-
gist Benjamin Bloom and others in 1956, commonly known as "Bloom's taxonomy."
Summaries of Bloom's categories of "the main intellectual objectives of education"—
knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—have
exerted tremendous influence on educators in many fields.6 "Taxonomies" of ques-
tions keyed to each of Bloom's categories have also had a long afterlife. These tax-
onomies are designed to help teachers measure the variety of their questions and to
formulate questions that will provoke higher levels of thinking.

Taxonomies of questions quickly proliferated in Bloom's wake: by the 1970s, at

least twenty-one classifications for classroom questions were being recommended to
teachers.7 Some were general, others tailored to a specific curriculum.8 In the field of
art education, educators advocating a larger place for art appreciation classes ver-
sus studio classes became interested in questioning strategies as a way to facilitate
classroom discussions about art. Their concern, too, was to stimulate higher-order
thinking—about art.
Art educators turned to two main sources for questioning strategies.9 The first
derived from the discipline of art criticism. The prominent art educator Edmund
Feldman suggested that teachers should ask questions designed to elicit what he had
proposed as the main forms of intellectual activity comprised by the discipline of art

RIKA BURNHAM AND ELLIOTT KAI-KEE

criticism. He recommended a questioning technique "in which children are obliged to
reply, such that their answers take the form of describing, analyzing, and explaining what
they see."10 The second strategy derived from general taxonomies of educational goals,
such as Bloom's. In "Art Teacher Questioning Strategy," Carmen and Nolan Armstrong
proposed to "promote student-centered teaching through questions designed to involve
the student actively in higher types of learning—discrimination, conceptualization
and generalization."11 In 1984, noting their similarities, Karen Hamblen brought these
two approaches together. Both systems started with factual, literal information, and
proceeded through increasingly complex application and analysis to final evaluation.12
Hamblen proposed an art criticism model using a questioning strategy within Bloom's
taxonomy, "based on research that indicates that questions, when properly formulated
with specific attention to levels of thinking, can actively involve the student in the learn-
ing process and promote independent critical inquiry."13

Q u e s t i o n s C o m e to the M u s e u m
Questioning strategies found a ready reception in the 1980s among museum educa-
tors searching for a methodology to replace a gallery lecture format that had come
to seem increasingly out of style and out of touch with then current educational
philosophy. In 1985, Patterson B. Williams, director of education at the Denver Art
Museum, accurately predicted a wave of educational reform in American museums
that would parallel reforms demanded of the American educational system as a whole.
Williams enthusiastically endorsed the innovative potential of a Socratic approach
to museum teaching: "Imagine permanent collections and temporary exhibitions
designed to encourage the style of experience produced by teaching Somatically!"14
Most museum education departments asked their gallery teachers who worked with
school groups, and even some who gave adult talks, to shift from a lecture-based format
to an interactive format centered around the use of questions. One popular guide writ-
ten in the mid-1980s, The Good Guide: A Sourcebookfor Interpreters, Docents, and Tour
Guides, like the slightly later New Frontiers in Touring Techniques: A Handbook of the
1991 National Docent Symposium, included sections on "questioning strategies."15 An
assessment model published in 1986 for "evaluating docent behavior" suggested that
observers "record the number and types of questions the docent initiates to engage
in a dialogue with visitors."16 When the keynote speaker at a College Board Summer
Institute in 1986 addressed a group of more than a hundred teachers, she said, "Ask a
teacher how she teaches, and chances are, the answer is, 'By asking questions.'"17 Ask
a museum teacher today how he or she teaches and, chances are, she too will still say,
"By asking questions."

It is time to ask not only why we ask so many questions in museum teaching but
also why we ask questions at all. To be sure, the questions that we as educators ask
ourselves as we prepare to teach, in our solitary looking and in our research, can play an
important heuristic role in charting our course of discovery about artworks. Curiosity,
which lies at the root of all desire to understand and to know, naturally expresses itself

Q U E S T I O N I N G T H E U S E OF Q U E S T I O N S
in questions. As the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose Truth and Method has
been widely influential beyond his own field of philosophical hermeneutics, writes,
"The path of all knowledge leads through the question." To ask a question is to bring
something into the open. To function in this way, questions themselves must demon-
strate a degree of genuine openness; their answers must not be foregone conclusions.
As Gadamer reminds us, "The openness of what is in question consists in the fact that
the answer is not settled Every true question requires this openness."18

Q u e s t i o n s in P r a c t i c e
Questions do have a legitimate place in gallery teaching; they can be used effectively to
bring into the open aspects of artworks that merit examination, and to focus concerns
that visitors themselves voice. However, gallery teachers have come to use questions
for what seems like every other conceivable purpose, from merely inducing visitors to
speak to voicing conclusions the teacher has had in mind prior to any given gallery talk.

In T h e Metropolitan M u s e u m of Art in New York, participants in a family program stand

captivated by four grand statues n a m e d for the four e l e m e n t s — E a r t h , Water, Fire, and

Air—in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts gallery. The gallery teacher asks,

"Where do you think the statues come from?"

The children all eagerly raise their hands, competing to get the teacher to call on

them. "Russia!" says one.

"China!" says another.

What a great group, the teacher thinks, they all w a n t to talk! "No, guess again," says

the teacher.

"Spain?"

"No!" This goes on for s o m e time, until the teacher finally says, "I'll tell y o u the

n a m e of the artist: it's Jean-Pierre de France."

"Ah!" says one child. " T h e y must c o m e f r o m France!"

The teacher has been successful in getting the students to talk. The children
love the guessing game, and in the end one student does get "the answer"—though we
note with regret that in such a game, most of the children's guesses are always "wrong."
Furthermore, an astute observer would note that the teacher's questions aren't really
about looking at the art at all.
Some questions in gallery teaching, as we have noted above, have as their primary
purpose inviting participation. Anyone walking by would think, How lively! The stu-
dents are so engaged! Other lines of questioning are designed specifically to encourage
people to relate works of art to their own lives.

In the Greek and Roman galleries of T h e Metropolitan M u s e u m of Art, eighth-grade

students are gathered around a marble grave stele of a y o u n g girl from the fifth century

B.C. The teacher points to a figure carved on the stele, a little girl holding two birds. "How

RIKA BURNHAM AND ELLIOTT KAI-KEE

 does looking at this tombstone make you feel?" he asks.

"Sad," replies one girl.

"Do y o u think it expresses the idea of death?" the teacher asks.

"Well, she's pretty, so it w o u l d remind everyone they loved her, just like my sister

w h o died w h e n she was seven."

The teacher addresses the w h o l e group. "If you were m a k i n g your o w n tomb marker,

w h a t w o u l d it look like?" he asks.

"I'd show myself holding a basketball," says one boy.

"I'd be waving goodbye," says another.

However lively or touching the children's responses may be, the teacher's ques-
tions have directed the students' attention toward themselves rather than the art.

A gallery teacher at the J. Paul Getty M u s e u m in Los Angeles has led her group to gather

before a painting by Jacques-Louis David. A f t e r talking about David's life and career, she

points out the clarity of the c o m p o s i t i o n and the sculptural quality of the figures. A s if she

has s u d d e n l y r e m e m b e r e d a directive from her supervisor to be interactive—Time to get

the visitors to talk! This is w h a t w e do here n o w ! — s h e interrupts her talk to ask, "So, w h a t

do y o u think of this? What strikes y o u about this painting?" T h e visitors look surprised

and seem unsure of h o w to respond, or e v e n if they are really supposed to.

Perhaps the visitors are thinking, She's the docent, she's told us about the artist and
pointed out what to look at, so why is she asking us? The teacher's questions appear
suddenly, out of nowhere. The visitors find themselves put on the spot; they feel
uncomfortable, self-conscious. "Ask interesting, thought-provoking questions and
people try to answer them!" says The Docent Educator}9 But as we can see from this
example, this is not always true. Nor is the reason for asking the questions clear.
What is sadly lacking in these and similar episodes, which most of us will
recognize as all too common, is concern for the proper purpose of talking. "Getting
people to talk" for the sake of talking is a false and misleading objective. Does just
any talking at all really make for a good tour? We would say no. In a museum gallery,
when the imperative of talking supersedes looking at the work of art, an irrelevant
pedagogical agenda has superseded a genuinely interpretive one.
Proponents of questions in museums maintain that questions do teach people
about art, by helping them to learn through their own discoveries. When dutiful gallery
teachers are told to stop lecturing and start questioning, they often simply translate
their lectures into a series of leading questions. A docent, for example, will in this
way employ questions to help visitors "discover" the interpretation that the docents
have received from the curators. "Well-thought-out questions can guide your audi-
ence to discover a lot of the information we, as docents, tend to tell," wrote Linda
Osmundson in The Docent Educator in 1999. "You'd be amazed at what tour groups
can discover Decide what you want the group to learn and gear your questions to

Q U E S T I O N I N G T H E U S E OF Q U E S T I O N S
that focus."20 But leading questions—questions with predetermined answers—do not,
in the end, lead anywhere. When teachers use questions in this way, the results are
often exasperating for the teacher and frustrating for the students. Why? Because the
questions do not arise from any genuine desire to know.

After discussing The Entombment by Peter Paul Rubens in the Flemish galleries, a gallery

teacher at the J. Paul Getty M u s e u m brings her y o u n g students into one of the galleries of

Dutch painting. "Do y o u think we're still living in a Catholic country?" she asks. Silence. Is

she talking about the students themselves, living in the United States? No, she informs her

group, this is Holland, and a Protestant country at the time these paintings were made.

T u r n i n g to a painting by Gerard ter Borch depicting an elegantly dressed y o u n g w o m a n

receiving a m u s i c lesson, she asks, "What w a s this artist interested in?" Bewilderment.

"Well, where d o e s he put a lot of attention? What did he show he could paint?" Silence.

"Look at the fabric!" she says, a little exasperated. "He loved to paint clothes!"

Despite persistent rephrasing, our gallery teacher never gets the answer she
wants. Had one of the students said, "He loves to paint clothes!" we would have heard
her responding, "Yes, you're very smart. That's exactly right!" As Emma might have
said, Why doesn't the teacher just tell her students what she wants them to say? Caught
between the information the teacher wants to impart and the desire to lure or compel
her students into voicing it for her, she assigns her students the impossible and fruitless
task of reading her mind.
More recently, as education theorists realized the inevitable problems that attend
the use of such "close-ended" questions—questions with definite, predetermined
answers—it has become commonplace to recommend "open-ended" questions, or
questions that allow for many responses. But even so-called open-ended questions
always define a finite horizon of response that limits the range of answers that will
make sense to both questioner and respondent.

T h e students are looking at a small but captivating photograph in a N e w York City

m u s e u m . T h e y have never heard of the photographer, Walker Evans, but the setting,

a N e w York subway car, is familiar to t h e m all. "What is the importance of photography

in the twentieth century?" asks the gallery teacher.

"Hearing the camera click," says a student.

"No. That's not one of the options," responds the teacher. "What is the photographer

interested in?"

"He's trying to show that people need better subway cars," says another.

"Well, okay," the teacher says. "Do you think the artist is interested in real life?

Social c o m m e n t a r y ? Ordinary people going to work?"

Some of the students are by this point looking at other photos in the gallery.

Undeterred, the teacher plows forward. "Do y o u think photography is a way to express

something?" N o response. "How do y o u think Walker Evans took these photos?"

RIKA BURNHAM AND ELLIOTT KAI-KEE

 "With a camera!" shouts one student in the back of the group.

"Actually," says the teacher, "Evans took these pictures w i t h a camera disguised

in such a way that his subjects were unaware that he w a s taking their picture."

In this case the gallery teacher asks open-ended questions that allow for various
responses, and the students answer honestly. But the teacher's expectations for the
answers are too narrow. The students' answers come from perspectives very different
from the teacher's, so she responds to their replies with more questions, and finally,
as a last resort, simply proffers a piece of information that reveals her own, primarily
art-historical, point of view.
In these examples the gallery teachers' pedagogical agendas drive the lessons.
The teachers structure the students' looking, point out with their questions aspects of
the artworks they believe are important, and communicate an interpretation they have
constructed beforehand. Asking questions invites the students to think that they are
part of a dialogue in which ideas are exchanged, but they catch on quickly that what
the teacher wants them to say is what counts. "Why should I say anything?" whispers
one student to his friend. "The docent isn't even listening."

Questioning Methods
Many museum educators have recently redefined their pedagogical goals to focus on
"skills," such as "critical thinking skills," or "cognitive learning skills," and so on, with
the addition of a category specifically related to art, "visual thinking skills." Proponents
of such skills-oriented instruction believe that students can apply these skills not only
in the museum but broadly across their school studies. Students are supposed to, for
example, answer questions to "acquire, organize, and use information derived from
investigating the collection," and simultaneously "to analyze, and ultimately, to inter-
pret on their own."21 This emphasis on skills has resulted in several easy-to-use meth-
ods that make extravagant claims for what they can accomplish.
In 1988, the Columbus Museum of Art developed a program designed "to show
participants how to organize their thinking and to analyze works of art through a ques-
tioning process." Participants gathered before an object and were told that they would
discuss and analyze the artwork together. The discussion leader structured the discus-
sion using a set of questions conceived and ordered beforehand. The program achieved
"considerable success," with participants appearing "genuinely delighted to discover
that they can go beyond a superficial subjective response to art if only someone poses
the right questions." Ultimately, the program presumed to teach the participants them-
selves to ask the "right questions," to teach them a "method of analyzing an object that
they might use when visiting a museum by themselves with friends."22
The Columbus project only hinted at what the "right" questions might look
like. Two other approaches provide the questions. In 1994, Project Muse (Museums
Uniting with Schools in Education), a research project at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education's Project Zero, drafted "an inquiry-based learning tool" called the Generic

Q U E S T I O N I N G T H E U S E OF Q U E S T I O N S
 Game. The game consists of a set of ten prefabricated questions structured to incorpo-
rate the "techniques of inquiry processes of learning through which ideas and percep-
tions build one upon the other—all elicited through open-ended questions that both
rely on what the learner already knows and encourage the learner to independently
develop that knowledge." 23 The questions prescribe a fixed sequence, beginning with
those requiring simple responses and continuing on to those requiring more complex
responses. Thus the series starts with What colors do you see in the artwork? and What
do you see in it?; moves through Is it true to life? and What ideas and/or emotions do you
think it expresses?; and ends with the instruction to students to think back on their
previous observations, and ask themselves, What have you discovered from looking at
this work of art? Have you learned anything about yourself or others?

"You can use the game again and again with many different works of art and in
many different situations"—or so the Generic Game's instructions claim. But we have
only to think of a random selection of artworks—an nkisi nkondi from the Congo; an
interior by Vermeer; a fifth-century B.C. Greek red-figure calyx krater; a Calder mobile;
an Ellsworth Kelly abstraction—and imagine applying the same questions to each of
them. How could this set of preformulated questions possibly develop viewers' abilities
to understand all of these works, and others, too?
Another approach, called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) "uses art to foster stu-
dents' capacities to observe, think, listen and communicate," 24 promising to "develop
critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills."25 The core tool of the
approach is a set of three prescribed questions: What's going on in this picture? What
doyou see that makes you say that? What else can you find? VTS-trained gallery teachers
are restricted to these three questions only. They also employ a set of three "facilitation
techniques": they "paraphrase comments neutrally," "point at the area [of the artwork]
being discussed," and "link contrasting and complementary comments" 26 —but they
do not provide any information, correct students' misapprehensions, or add comments
of their own.

The following session is transcribed from the video of a VTS "professional devel-
opment institute" at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.27 The group of
VTS teacher trainees is discussing "The Ascension of Simon Bolivar on Mount Jamaica"
(1983), a symbolic portrait of the great South American leader in an exuberant folk-art
style by the Jamaican artist Everald Brown (1917-2002).28 (The instructor never shares
either the title or the artist's name with the group.) Brown depicts Bolivar as a giant
figure straddling the entire island of Jamaica, surrounded by equally gargantuan fruits
and vegetables, as the island pours out its natural bounty in tribute to South America's
"El Libertador." The instructor begins with the standard opening VTS question, "What's
going on in this picture?" After a few initial comments from the trainees, she summa-
rizes their observations thus far:

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay, so you talked about the corn, so we have all this vegetation, and then

you thought this man might be a kind of conqueror. What do you see that makes you say that?

R I K A BURNHAM A N D E L L I O T T K A I - K E E
 A N N A : The way he's dressed. He's not appropriately dressed for someone w h o is a native

of a tropical island just because of the climate, and he has heavy clothes on. He has a

jacket and high equestrian boots on and a hat, and it doesn't really look like he fits in.

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay, so you're thinking that his style of dress is kind of incongruous with

the setting that he's in? That he's dressed a little—it's the clothing is too heavy, so maybe

he's from another place, so you're thinking he's there to conquer the island in some way.

Okay. What more can we find? Yeah, Tracy?

T R A C Y : Well, it also appears that what looks like a pepper in his right hand [is] being held

as a sword, which could also imply that he's a conqueror or someone who's not here to do

good.

I N S T R U C T O R : So what do you see that makes you say that it's kind of in the style of

holding a sword?

T R A C Y : The way he's holding it, it's upright, pointing, as if he's going to—lash out at

someone or something with it.

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay, so it looks like his body's kind of poised to move forward.

T R A C Y : Poised to attack.

I N S T R U C T O R : So it looks almost like he's holding this pepper as a kind of weapon.

T R A C Y : Yes.

I N S T R U C T O R : Which does not necessarily bode well for the island that he's on.

T R A C Y : It doesn't appear to.

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay. Thanks. Stephanie, what more can we find?

The teacher trainees in this session are clearly engaged by the painting, and they
observe it closely. As the session continues, they propose various contradictory inter-
pretations of the canvas's central figure and his relation to the people of the island he
stands upon, based on their understandings of the artist's imagery: "rescuer," bringer
of a message of peace or hope or "propaganda," "provider of the food," exploiter who
seems to be "using their resources to gain control over them." The instructor through-
out provides accurate summaries and paraphrases of the trainees' comments. Yet when
any one of the trainees misunderstands some element of the painting—saying that
Bolivar is wearing a hat (he is not), seeing the coconut that Bolivar holds in his left
hand as a football or a bomb, or seeing Bolivar as having "no legs"—and then builds
an interpretation on that basis, the teacher does not, cannot, correct their mistakes or
even direct them to reconsider.

Brown's invented iconography is richly complex. According to the American

Folk Art Museum's description of the painting on its Web site, "A cock is crowing into
the general's ear; the message the rooster delivers (of liberation? of freedom?) travels
through Bolivar's head to the right of the painting in the shape of a yellow cloudlike
form that lands on another land mass, the west coast of Africa, at the time a region of
colonized countries and oppression." 29 Two of the trainees note how this form "pulls
together" the composition and seems to be a key to its meaning. Yet the group is never
able to identify the "islands" they see as Jamaica and Africa, or able to identify the

Q U E S T I O N I N G THE USE OF Q U E S T I O N S
 central figure as Bolivar, and without access to these crucial facts, their interpretive
process tends to circle around without progressing, and ends back where it started:

T R A I N E E : When Anna was discussing the fruits and vegetables and what she saw, it made

me look at the chili pepper that he seems to be holding in his hand, and it seems like he's

using their resources to gain control over them.

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay, so we've talked before about this kind of gesture over here with the

pepper, and I'm trying to think of how to paraphrase, and it's like he's taking the resources

of the island, the things that have been helpful to these people, and somehow using it to

subjugate them.

T R A I N E E : Right. It really does look knifelike, the way he's holding it.

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay, so you're agreeing that it looks like a violent kind of act.

T R A I N E E : Right.

I N S T R U C T O R : Okay, well, thank you very much. This has been a great session.

We might wonder what makes a VTS session "great." Simon Bolivar never con-
quered Jamaica; rather, he briefly sought refuge there, living in exile on the island from
1814 to 1815 after successfully defeating Spanish colonial forces in Colombia. Because
the instructor does not—and, in accordance with the strictures of VTS technique, is
not permitted to—provide any historical or cultural context for the picture—not even
its title—the viewers are never able truly to grasp it.30 Artworks based on idiosyncratic
iconographic programs such as Brown's surely demand a less mechanical pedagogical
approach. What value has this group "gotten out of" its encounter with the artwork if
they can never even identify its subject? Can they be said to have really seen it? Have
they not perhaps been cheated out of an authentic encounter with the painting?

Questions as open-ended as the three required by VTS seem designed to engen-

der open and "democratic" conversation about an artwork.31 But the instructor's con-
finement to the use of the three VTS questions, together with paraphrase, and the
denial of information about the work, constitute a procedure that severely limits
her ability to help students to understand it; the participants in this episode are left
to reach their own erroneous conclusions about Brown's painting. Surely we must
question any method that leaves the gallery teacher with such limited means for
guiding a conversation that strays far afield and, above all, without any responsibil-
ity for the outcome.

Good Intentions, S e r i o u s Problems

In gallery teaching, we want to encourage our visitors to engage with artworks in mean-
ingful ways and to participate in a lively exchange—always a complex task. Teachers
deploy questions with the best of intentions; however, even the most insistent propo-
nents of questions in museum teaching agree to some extent that in practice questions
are flawed. Witness the number of articles and handbooks that have proliferated to
"fix the questions." Most museum educators acknowledge the bewildering variety of

R I K A BURNHAM A N D E L L I O T T K A I - K E E
possible questions and the wide range of ways in which they may be used. They also
see questions-based sessions turn out poorly, as in the real-life stories cited above. In
response, they have turned to the literature of classifications and formulated their
own strategies.
Strategies take the form of lists of dos and don'ts, with instructions, for example,
to ask open-ended questions, or reflective and challenging questions, and not to ask
leading, run-on, yes-no, ambiguous, vague, obvious, or embarrassing questions.32
Many teachers have taken to writing out their questions ahead of time and can be seen
carrying lists of "recommended" questions with them into the galleries. Preoccupied
with lists and prescriptions, gallery teachers forget why they are asking questions at all.

A longtime education volunteer at T h e Metropolitan M u s e u m of Art remarks, "One of our

volunteers recently gave a tour in w h i c h she asked a question for every single inch of

a painting. Every single inch! The kids were so busy answering the questions that they

weren't e v e n looking at the painting. They were just answering the questions. T h e y never

had a minute to appreciate the painting."

In this grand confusion, we have lost our way. Despite the taxonomies and the
strategies and the good intentions, as we watch teaching in the galleries of our muse-
ums we find that some of the worst teaching results from the practice of asking ques-
tions. And what in the world are we to make of this bit of advice: "it becomes far easier
to construct questions for active learning if you focus on the skills being taught, rather
than the objects being examined"?33 When the artworks themselves cease to matter in
an art museum, surely something is awry. It is time to go back to beginnings. What is
our goal each time we take a group of people into the galleries? How do we reach this
goal? What does the currently ubiquitous—and tendentious—term best practices really
mean in gallery teaching? Where do questions fit into our practice when we teach at
our best?

Dialogical Teaching without Questions

We believe the ultimate objective of good museum teaching is a certain kind of experi-
ence that draws visitors and teacher into a deep and satisfying understanding of art-
works. The experience of a work of art is uniquely possible in the museum, and we have
the privilege of opening that experience to our visitors through dialogical engagement.
We propose that we stop asking our visitors questions and return to the artworks, not
through lecturing, but through engaging our visitors in dialogues about and with the
art. Dialogue can be rich, even without questions.

In the galleries of The Metropolitan M u s e u m of Art a teacher gathers her visitors before

Rembrandt's Abraham and the Three Angels of 1646, w h i c h is on loan to the m u s e u m . T h e

gallery teacher suggests that everyone look at the painting closely, carefully, for a f e w

m o m e n t s , before beginning to discuss it. The program begins simply with an open-ended

Q U E S T I O N I N G T H E U S E OF Q U E S T I O N S
 invitation for thoughts and observations. T h e teacher adds that the visitors might be able

to contribute to w h a t is k n o w n about this rarely seen artwork through their careful

looking. Captivated, the participants puzzle over the dramatic light.

"Such bright illumination and such darkness!" says one.

Another remarks, "It is clearly a story."

This prompts another to suggest, "It looks like a visitation."

"But why," asks another, "is the large figure in w h i t e sticking his foot out like that?"

Everyone looks again and sees that the figure sticking his foot out has large and

splendid white wings. Someone else says that the "light is radiating" f r o m this figure. The

teacher notes that while this figure does indeed look like an angel, it is in fact the figure

of God himself in the guise of an angel, and that this painting tells a story in w h i c h divine

and h u m a n presences meet.

"I just k n e w it was someone special," says one of the visitors.

"Oh," says another, "I think God is sticking his foot out because he is getting his feet

washed! See the basin, and the m a n crouching d o w n as if to begin!"

Another visitor w h o had b e e n looking intently adds hesitantly, "That's w h a t they do

in the Bible, isn't it? I think the m a n w a s h i n g God's feet is Abraham!"

The teacher says, "Yes, the artist, Rembrandt, w h o painted this small picture, is

showing G o d appearing to Abraham." She explains that Rembrandt is telling the story in

w h i c h the biblical patriarch invites three strangers to his house for a meal. As A b r a h a m

b e n d s to w a s h their feet, he realizes to his surprise that one of the strangers is God.

"The glow around God is intensifying as w e look," says one visitor. "It's so beautiful,

like sunlight in the night." There is a m o m e n t of appreciative silence.

"But it's very dark all around," says another. "My eyes have to get used to it, just like

being in the nighttime. I think I see a w o m a n in the darkened doorway in the small house

on the right."

Still another says, "I see her n o w too. I w o n d e r if that's the Virgin Mary?"

"It's very dark," says the teacher, "and so it's hard to tell with any certainty. But

w e k n o w f r o m historical records that Rembrandt is telling the story of A b r a h a m from the

book of Genesis, in the Old Testament, long before the birth of Christ."

Says one of the visitors, " T h e n it must be Sarah."

"Oh, God has promised A b r a h a m that his wife will bear a son," says s o m e o n e else.

Another m o m e n t of silence.

"It's as if all this unfolds in some dreamlike but brilliant light," says the teacher.

She continues, "Some have said that there are certain messages from G o d that can only

be understood in the night." More silence.

Someone says, unexpectedly, "This is a real Rembrandt, isn't it?" Once the teacher

has assured the group that the work is indeed genuine, and that its attribution is

uncontested, everyone's attention returns to the image.

Someone remarks on the angel at the left w h o appears to be playing a flute, or a

recorder. "Appropriate," he says, "that if God drops by you should play a little music."

T h e group looks appreciatively again at the figure of God with widespread wings,

RIKA BURNHAM AND E L L I O T T KA I- KE E

 and another participant says quietly, "How often do y o u get to see God getting his feet

w a s h e d , right here on earth?"

Everyone in this small group joins in the dialogue, which is ignited by the gallery
teacher, but propelled forward by the visitors. They respond to one another's ideas
and comment on them, urged on by the excitement of discovery. They ask questions,
and with their remarks, chart the course of the dialogue. The gallery teacher listens
carefully, adding her own thoughts and sharing her knowledge at appropriate
junctures. Momentum builds steadily. This particular gallery dialogue is so remarkable
in its focused intensity that the Metropolitan's curator of seventeenth-century Dutch
paintings, who is passing through the gallery, wanders over at one point, curious
about this group's obviously exceptional interest in the canvas, and briefly shares his
perspective on Rembrandt and the influence of printmaking on this particular picture.
The dialogue continues for a while, and culminates with a shared, hushed feeling of
reverence, as everyone agrees how magical the little painting is. The teacher has not
asked a single question.

In good gallery teaching, the art of asking questions disappears into the art of
dialogue. We ask visitors to participate in dialogues that are made up of observations,
comments, and pieces of information that allow the exploration to flow on toward
possible interpretations—and questions, too: the participants' own. We invite people
into dialogue—with us, with one another, and above all, with the artwork itself. When
we say that we want visitors to engage with an artwork, we are saying that we want
them to look intensely and to take up the challenge of making sense of what they see.
We listen. We think together. They will go back and forth with the artwork, "reading"
it, focusing on one detail or another, trying to put the details together into a whole.
We ask our visitors to put what they think and feel into words, for it is primarily
through words that their interpretations will develop, be shared, and become whole
and articulate.

In our work, we have the opportunity to engage in a unique process of interpretation,

with small, temporary communities of visitors. The eyes of many are better than the
eyes of one. Looking together produces observations and insights that add up to an
interpretation that goes beyond the contributions of any single participant. Viewers
share their ideas and responses to artworks with one another in a dynamic that has the
potential to build into larger understandings. Questions are not needed.

R e t h i n k i n g Q u e s t i o n s in D i a l o g i c a l T e a c h i n g
It seems heretical to question questions. John Dewey himself remarked that
questioning is "in essence the very core of teaching."34 Questions do have a role in the
process of interpretation, as they inevitably arise amid the exchange of thoughts and
observations. However, the educator should not drive the dialogue by interrogating
the group and leading every exchange. With their comments and their questions, the
whole group generates and continually regenerates the dialogue. In the words of one

Q U E S T I O N I N G T H E U S E OF Q U E S T I O N S
participant in a program at the Metropolitan, "By not asking us questions, you allowed
us to ask our own questions."
Works of art often appear to our visitors to be mysterious, recalcitrant to the
eye. Visitors may wonder why some works of art are in the museum at all. They may
also wonder why they should look at an artwork, or what it is about. As they attempt
to enter the world of a work of art, questions take shape in their minds. Questions
arise because someone needs to know something. As Gadamer puts it, "questioning is
more a passion than an action. A question presses itself on us; we can no longer avoid
it."35 There might be one question, or many. They often seem urgent. Sometimes a
question is easily answered with information, such as Who is the artist? But sometimes
the questions that viewers raise point to aspects of artworks that require interpretation,
and allow for many answers. Indeed, viewers' answers are often tentative, speculative,
imaginative—even poetic.

" W h y are the angel's wings spread?" asks one visitor, peering intently at Rembrandt's

scene.

"To bring God's light to earth," replies another visitor.

"So that he can keep from being interrupted while A b r a h a m washes his feet," says

another.

"Or maybe," says yet another, "to remind us w e are all u n d e r God's protective wings."

Our visitors ask us questions as varied as Is that the original frame? Is Vermeer
considered a Baroque painter? Was Gauguin religious? Where did the museum get all
these things? Why are some pictures under glass? We can't anticipate what people want to
know—we cannot even imagine some of their questions—but their questions are always
crucial to their own experience, as they shape their appreciation and understanding of
the artworks we examine together. Every question that a viewer raises is important to
consider, for their unanswered questions may become a barrier to further looking. One
visitor to the Rembrandt galleries at the Metropolitan went carefully, systematically,
through the collection, pausing to look closely at each painting. Nearly half an hour
later, he turned to the security guard and asked, "Are these the originals?" Only after
he was assured that they were could he begin to engage with the works of art in ways
we might think meaningful.

Some questions are direct; others lie beneath visitors' remarks, needing
only a turn of phrase to become apparent. Beneath a statement such as I wonder
why Monet used such strange colors in his late works lies a question such as Why is
this Monet painting so different than his earlier works, ones I've seen elsewhere? Was
Monet experimenting? What was his vision of the world around him? Could he have
been looking at old master paintings? We must listen for the questions that will lead
to understanding, and listen for big or small questions that "break open" the object
for our visitors, and for ourselves. We have heard a visitor ask, "Why did Van Gogh
include just one white iris?" A third-grader asks of a Rembrandt painting, "What does

RIKA BURNHAM AND ELLIOTT KA I- KE E

it mean?" A college student wants to know "Does this Renaissance portrait represent
all humanity, or just the subject?" These are all authentic questions, difficult to answer
simply, worthy of serious consideration by teacher and fellow participants. They are
the kind of questions that unquestionably do belong in our gallery programs.
As gallery teachers and as viewers of art, we will have our own questions about an
artwork. Some of our questions drive our study and preparation, embodying our own
efforts to interpret the artworks we teach. Other questions may press in upon us as we
lead our groups. These questions should remain in the background, however, and not
form the leading edge of the dialogue we facilitate with our visitors. Instead, we must
listen keenly for our visitors' questions, for what our visitors want and need to know.
What, then, do we do? Our first task is to study the artwork and create a context
within which questions might prove useful and workable, a context of trust and respect,
of inquiry and investigation, but also of pleasure and anticipated satisfaction. We invite
people in, gently, by encouraging thoughts and observations as points of departure.
We do not start out by asking questions. We begin and continue a dialogue based on
viewers' perceptions and thoughts. We do not use questions to force participation, or
to test anyone's knowledge or competence. We do not formulate questions in advance.
We do not distinguish good questions from bad. We allow questions to arise out of
the encounter with the artwork, and when they do arise, they provide direction as we
search for meaning together. Questions generate answers and ideas, which generate
more questions. In this exchange among teacher, visitor, and artwork, the artworks
come alive to their viewers.

Notes
1. William Isaacs, "Dialogic Leadership," The Systems Thinker: Building Shared Understanding
10, no. l (Feb. 1999), 2, available at http://www.dialogos.com/resources/files/systhink.pdf.

2. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshall, 2nd rev. ed. (London and New York: Continuum, 2004; a translation of Wahrheit
und Methode: Grundziige einerphilosophischen Hermeneutik, i960), 367-68.

3. Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination: Essays in Education, the Arts, and Social Change
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Education, 1995), 150.
4. Meredith Gall, who studied classroom teaching in 1970, concluded, "In a half-century there
has been no essential change in the types of questions which teachers emphasize in the
classroom. About 60% of teachers' questions require students to recall facts; about 20%
require students to think; and the remaining 20% are procedural." Meredith D. Gall, "The Use
of Questions in Teaching," Teacher Education Division Publication Services, Report A70-9,
repr. in Review of Educational Research 40, no. 5 (1970): 713.

5. See 0. L. Davis, Kevin R. Morse, Virginia M. Rogers, and Drew C. Tinsley, "Studying the
Cognitive Emphases of Teachers' Classroom Questions," Educational Leadership 26, no. 7
(Apr. 1969): 711; and Mary J. Aschner, "Asking Questions to Trigger Thinking," NEA Journal
50, no. 6 (Sept. 1961): 44.
6. Benjamin S. Bloom and David R. Krathwohl, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:
The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (New York: David
McKay, 1956).

Q U E S T I O N I N G THE USE OF Q U E S T I O N S
 7. Rodney Riegle, "Classifying Classroom Questions," Journal of Teacher Education 27, no. 2
(June 1976): 156-61.
8. See Gall, "The Use of Questions in Teaching": 711 (see note 4).
9. See Martha Taunton, "Questioning Strategies to Encourage Young Children to Talk about
Art," Art Education 36, no. 4 (1983): 40.
10. Edmund B. Feldman, "The Teacher as Model Critic," Journal of Aesthetic Education 7, no. 1
(Jan. 1973): 56.

11. Carmen L. Armstrong and Nolan A. Armstrong, "Art Teacher Questioning Strategy," Studies
in Art Education 18, no. 3 (1977): S3.

12. Karen A. Hamblen, "An Art Criticism Questioning Strategy within the Framework of Bloom's
Taxonomy," Studies in Art Education 26, no. 1 (Fall 1984): 46.

13. Ibid., 41.

14. Patterson B. Williams, "Educational Excellence in Art Museums: An Agenda for Reform,"
Journal of Aesthetic Education 19, no. 2 (Summer 198s): 110.
15. See Alison L. Grinder and Sue E. McCoy, The Good Guide: A Sourcebook for Interpreters,
Docents, and Tour Guides (Scottsdale, AZ: Ironwood Publishing, 1985) and Daryl K. Fischer,
New Frontiers in Touring Techniques: A Handbook of the 1991 National Docent Symposium
(Denver: Denver Art Museum, 1992).

16. Inez S. Wolins, Sherry Spires, and Helen Silverman, "The Docent as Teacher: Redefining a
Commitment to Museum Education," Museum News 64, no. 4 (Apr. 1986): 45.

17. Dennie Wolf, "The Art of Questioning," Academic Connections (Winter 1987): 1, available at
http://exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/workshops/artofquestioning.html.

18. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 357 (see note 2).

19. Alan Gartenhaus, "Asking Questions," The Docent Educator 9, no. 2 (Winter 1999-2000): 2.

20. Linda Osmunds on, "Involving Your Audience," The Docent Educator 9, no. 2 (Winter
1999-2000): 18.
21. Alan Gartenhaus, "What's It to You?" The Docent Educator 7, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 2.

22. Sharon Kokot, "Museums and Visual Literacy for Adults," Journal of Aesthetic Education 22,
no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 107-8.
23. Jessica Davis, The Muse Book (Cambridge, MA: Project Zero, 1996), 79-
24. Visual Thinking Strategies, "A VTS Discussion: VTS Facilitation 101," available at
http://www.vtsh0me.0rg/pages/a-vts-discussi0n#discussi0n.

25. Visual Thinking Strategies, "What Is VTS?" available at http://www.vtshome.org/pages/

what-is-vts.

26. Visual Thinking Strategies, "A VTS Discussion: V T S Facilitation 101" (see note 24).
27. The video is available on the VTS Web site, where it is offered among a set of exemplary
VTS sessions for various age groups, at Visual Thinking Strategies, "A VTS Discussion: VTS
Discussion Videos with Teachers/A VTS Discussion with Adults," at http://www.vtshome.org/
pages/a-vts-discussion#discussion.

28. An image of Everald Brown's painting can be viewed on the museum's Web site at
http://www.folkartmuseum.org/?p=folk&t=images&id=4296.

29. The full caption text is available at http://www.folkartmuseum.org/?p=folk&t=images&id

=4296.
30. One of the most curious moments in this VTS session occurs w h e n one of the trainees, Yuen,
reaching for some context to help her make sense of the group's contradictory interpretations
of the picture, looks to the museum itself in which the session takes place:

RIKA BURNHAM AND ELLIOTT KAI-KEE

 YUEN: Going back to what you were saying about propaganda, I had that idea too when
Stephanie had mentioned that it was about peace and hope, but I question whether it
is propaganda, because of the style of the image, thinking, if it is propaganda from the
culture that he's from—I'm thinking Western European—that this would be more in
the style of Western European art or painting. And when I look at this and also
knowing that it's from the collection here, at the Folk Art Museum, thinking of
outsider, unschooled art, I think it's produced, maybe, by the people who are more
indigenous to this culture, and so I question that part. And I was just thinking back to
a story I had learned about, I think it was a general in Chile, Bernard O'Higgins. He
was this Irish military figure who led a revolution for the people. He has this heroic
stance in Chile but he's this white man.
I N S T R U C T O R : He's an outsider to the culture?

YUEN: Yeah. And he came as a conquistador, but actually led this revolution against
the powers that be.

31. According to the VTS Web site, VTS "uses facilitated discussion to enable students to
practice respectful, democratic, collaborative problem solving skills that over time transfer
to other classroom interactions, and beyond." Visual Thinking Strategies, "What Is VTS?"
(see note 25).

32. Karen A. Hamblen, "Don't You Think Some Brighter Colors Would Improve Your Painting?—
Or, Constructing Questions for Art Dialogues," Art Education 37, no. 1 (Jan. 1984): 12-14.

33. Alan Gartenhaus, "Active Learning, Thinking Skills, and Audience Participation," The Docent
Educator 12, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 3.
34. John Dewey, How We Think (Boston, MA: D. C. Heath, rev. ed. 1933), 266.

35. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 360 (see note 2).

111

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