About Academic Programs

Photograph of an Amherst College professor and the Mead Art Museum's Head of Education with three students teaching and learning in the galleries of the Mead.

The Mead Art Museum is a site for dynamic and experiential interactions between communities, curricula, and collections. Our dedicated Academic Programs offer faculty the opportunity to extend their classroom into the museum with curricular experiences across disciplines and topics.

Work with our Academic Programs team, Emily Potter-Ndiaye and Miloslava (Mila) Hruba to design a one-time visit or assignment, or semester-long course partnership for your course. 

Our Program Offerings:

Study Room Session: We will pull up to 7 objects from the Mead’s collection of o0ver 20,000, and work with faculty to develop assignments and prompts for the class visit. This session Ccan be facilitated by Mead staff or the professor.

Exhibition Program: Emily Potter-Ndiaye leads guided class sessions or assignments in the Mead’s rotating galleries, based around your learning objective, and drawing from a range of experiential learning and inquiry-based research methods. 

Self Guided Class or Assignment in Current Exhibition: Send your students to see a current exhibition and provide them with an assignment of prompts. Please note the Mead’s current open hours, and provide advance notice to send Emily Potter-Ndiaye (epotterndiaye@amherst.edu)  advance notice so we can welcome your students. 

Assignments in the collections: Work with Mila Hruba to schedule times to connect your students one on one, or in small groups with artworks from Mead Collections in our study room. 

Study Room Appointment

Schedule Your Class Visit:

Email Emily Potter-Ndiaye with as much preliminary information as you have, ie:

  • Your class title, topic, and number of students (anticipated)
  • Your preferred date(s) and time(s)
  • Your main learning objective(s) for the museum session
  • Anything you know about the artworks or what types of artworks you'd like to use. (Less is more! We advise between 3 and 6 objects/class, with exceptions for large classes or particular pedagogical reasons). Please note depending on the size and condition of the artwork, we may not be able to pull all of your selections.

Emily or Mila will reply to confirm the date and set up a 30-minute call to plan the logistics, agenda, and artwork for your session.