Massive Open Online Course begins February 10
Milwaukee Art Museum announces first-ever MOOC
Milwaukee, Wis. – The Milwaukee Art Museum, in partnership with Google, will offer a semester-long Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), beginning on February 10, 2015. This free course will allow participants to:
• Get comfortable with looking at art by making personal connections with works of art from around the world and in your hometown
• Develop skills such as observing carefully, reflecting and assessing, and creating meaning
• Connect art to unexpected disciplines
• Learn from and interact with a global community of arts-interested people
• Contribute to a worldwide understanding of art through a final project, creatively responding to a work of art of your choice
“Our virtual classroom will be the Google Cultural Institute, and our physical classrooms will be art museums or galleries located in your hometown. This completely free course will take about twenty-one hours to complete,” said Brigid Globensky, the Barbara Brown Lee Senior Director of Education and Programs at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “It’s a combination of brief activities, discussion, and reflection in our forum; live Google Hangouts on Air; and hands-on projects.”
Group sign-ups are encouraged for the various activities involved. Participants do not need to live in the Milwaukee region.
“This isn’t your average Art History 101 course. Instead of a chronological walkthrough of art through the ages, we’ll be making personal connections to works of art and connecting artwork to unexpected careers and disciplines. Whether you’ve never been to a museum before or you are a longtime art lover, join us for an informal, fun-filled exploration of art and how we as humans bring art into our lives in varied ways,” said Globensky.
Interested participants can sign up at http://courses.mam.org.
ABOUT MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
Prominently situated on the shores of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Art Museum campus welcomes over 400,000 visitors annually. The Museum was founded over 125 years ago and is the largest and most significant art museum in Wisconsin. It houses a rich collection of over 30,000 works, with strengths in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, contemporary art, and American decorative arts. It is the world’s leading repository for work by untrained creators and has one of the largest collections of works by Georgia O’Keeffe. The Museum’s celebrated Santiago Calatrava–designed Quadracci Pavilion, completed in 2001, showcases both Museum-produced and traveling feature exhibitions.
RESTORE. REINSTALL. REIMAGINE.
Beginning in fall 2014, the Museum began an ambitious project to renovate its two oldest buildings, the Eero Saarinen–designed War Memorial Center (1957) and the David Kahler–designed addition (1975), which house the Museum’s Collection Galleries. Increased gallery space, including an entire floor dedicated to photography and new media, an improved gallery layout, and a new lakeside entrance are among the improvements planned. The collections will be off view through fall 2015; however, the Museum is open throughout construction, with a vibrant schedule of exciting exhibitions, educational offerings, and special programs in the Quadracci Pavilion. For more information, visit mam.org.
ABOUT GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE
The Google Cultural Institute is dedicated to creating technology that helps the cultural community to bring their art, archives, heritage sites and other material online. The aim is to increase the range and volume of material from the cultural world that is available for people to explore online and in doing so, democratize access to it and preserve it for future generations.
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