School Tours
While we eagerly await the safe return of on-site school tours, we invite you to bring the Milwaukee Art Museum into your classroom through a virtual school group tour or online teaching resources—all designed to support critical thinking, creativity, and visual literacy skills.
Virtual School Group Tours
Experience the Milwaukee Art Museum from your classroom with a virtual school group tour led by a Museum educator. Each tour is 45 minutes, with inquiry-based conversations and activities using works of art in the Museum’s collection.
- $150 flat fee for one class with up to 35 students
- Request your tour three weeks in advance
- All students receive a Family Pass for free admission to the Milwaukee Art Museum for two adults and up to four children age 17 and younger.
For more information, contact grouptours@mam.org.
Virtual Tours: Themed
Grades K–3 | 45 mins
Animals in Art
Discover a menagerie of friendly animals and fantastic beasts from different cultures and times in paintings and sculptures.
Experiencing Art Through the Senses
Take a journey with art using your senses and imagination: explore how works of art might smell, taste, feel, and sound.
Elements of Art
Learn how artists begin to create masterpieces by getting to know the building blocks of art: line, shape, color, texture, and space.
Grades 4–12 | 45 mins
Antiquities to Contemporary
Experience a virtual timeline of art featuring highlights from the Museum’s collection. Explore a variety of art forms and movements throughout history, from ancient to modern times.
American Stories
Hear about American stories, places, and people from across the United States, as represented by paintings, sculptures, and decorative artworks in the American art collections at the Museum.
Portraiture
Discover the stories of people and animals by looking for visual clues in portraits from many times and places.
Social Concerns + Social Justice in Art
Examine the meaning and history of works of art through a social justice lens, and consider the perspectives of the artists and the impact of the stories they capture. Social concerns discussed during this tour may include poverty, racism, gender inequalities, and representation.
Writing + Art
This tour connects art with writing activities from our book Look, Write, See: Activities for Teaching Writing and Learning About Art. Inspired by the National Writing Project at Carroll University and grounded in the Six Traits of Writing framework, this tour introduces works of art as inspiration for writing. Students will need a notebook or sketchbook and writing tools to fully experience this tour.
Virtual Tours: Music + Art
Presented in partnership with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
Make the most of your MSO Concert for Schools experience by pairing it with a visual art tour of works at the Museum that relate to concert themes. Fees and registration for the MSO Concert for Schools program are separate and can be found at mso.org.
Grades K–2 | Music for Me Concerts
Forte Forecast: A Wet and Windy Musical Adventure
Virtual tours available November 2021.
Observe how artists show time of day, seasons, and weather, from peaceful mornings to stormy nights!
Grades 3–8 | Youth
The Composer Is Dead: A Slightly Spooky Musical Mystery
Virtual tours available October 2021.
Investigate works of art with tension, suspense, and intrigue on this eerie art adventure.
Recycling Rhapsody: Composers Reuse and Recycle, Too!
Virtual tours available February 2022. If health and safety protocols allow, in-person tours may also be offered.
Explore how artists—like composers!—from different environments and cultures have transformed everyday objects and discarded materials into unique works of art.
Before Your Virtual Tour
Virtual tours offer engagement opportunities for a variety of learning styles. We recommend that students have a sketchbook, notebook, or scratch paper, and a pencil for drawing or writing activities during the tour.
Museum educators will open the virtual tour platform 15 minutes prior to the start of the tour to test audio and visual access with the teacher.
Request a virtual tour »Teaching Resources
Whether you have five minutes or an hour for arts-integrated activities, we have online resources to complement your curriculum and support a flexible schedule. Share a pre-recorded mini tour or curator talk, writing and art-making activities, or a 360 tour with your students at teachers.mam.org
- Edwin Landseer, Portrait of a Terrier, The Property of Owen Williams, ESQ., M.P. (Jocko with a Hedgehog), 1828 (detail). Oil on canvas. Gift of Erwin C. Uihlein, M1967.79. Photo by Larry Sanders.
- Sénèque Obin, Clugny Market [Marché Clugny], 1966 (detail). Oil on Masonite. Gift of Richard and Erna Flagg, M1991.145. Photo by Efraim Lev-er.
- Ellsworth Kelly, Red, Yellow, Blue II, 1965 (detail). Acrylic on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley, M1977.113a-c. Photo by Malcolm Varon. © Ellsworth Kelly.
- Georgia O’Keeffe, Series I–No. 3, 1918 (detail). Oil on board. Gift of Jane Bradley Pettit Foundation and the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, M1997.192. Photo by Larry Sanders. © Milwaukee Art Museum.
- William James Glackens, Breezy Day, Tugboats, New York Harbor, ca. 1910 (detail). Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Abert and Mrs. Barbara Abert Tooman, M1974.230. Photo by John Nienhuis.
- Attributed to Georg Anton Abraham Urlaub, Portrait of Two Young Men in Powdered Wigs, ca. 1770 (detail). Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Myron Laskin in memory of their daughter Elizabeth, M1966.61. Photo by John R. Glembin.
- Rashid Johnson, Untitled Anxious Audience, 2017 (detail). Ceramic tile, soap, and wax. Purchase, with funds from Mark and Debbie Attanasio, Marianne and Sheldon Lubar, Joanne Murphy, the African American Art Alliance, and the Modern and Contemporary Art Deaccession Funds, M2017.60. Photo by Martin Parsekian. © Rashid Johnson.
- Wendell Castle, Walking Cabinet, 1988 (detail). Painted wood, cast aluminum, and mappa burl veneer. Gift of Karen Johnson Boyd, M1989.112.
- Thomas Cole, Storm in the Wilderness, 1826–28. Oil on canvas. Layton Art Collection Inc., Purchase L1968.25. Photo by Larry Sanders
- Susan Rothenberg, Mist from the Chest, 1983. Oil on canvas. Gift of Friends of Art, M1984.5. Photo by Dedra Walls. © Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Simon Sparrow, Untitled, 1984. Assemblage with painted wood frame. Purchase, Doerfler Fund, M1985.49. Photo by P. Richard Eells
