The event was part of a larger effort to promote the Mead as a resource beyond the College. “We wanted to celebrate how accessible the museum is for local families,” Lizzie Barker, Director and Chief Curator of the museum, said. “It’s open late during the week, it’s open on weekends [and] it’s always free.”
Barker organized the event, along with Pam Russell, Andrew W. Mellon Coordinator of College Programs, and volunteer Jill Bierly.
“We’ve had good success reaching the academic community here,” Barker said, “but we also want to serve the larger community.”
Local resident Diana Peters brought her son Lucas Ross, age five, to the Mead for the day, and the two each drew pictures with the paper and colored pencils provided. Their artwork, along with the other visitors’, will be displayed in the Mead hallway for the next month as a special exhibit.
“It’s a nice opportunity to get invited here for a kid-friendly event,” Peters said. “It’s great to see the College making connections with the community, because you have so much here.”
The docents, a group of about 35 students who mostly attend Amherst College, spend about five hours a week at the museum. Their duties include researching the museum’s collection and working behind the scenes in addition to working at events. To prepare for Community Day, the docents met weekly and learned to give tours using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a method developed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
In the VTS system, docents ask audience members to engage directly with the artwork. They encourage listeners to talk about how the art makes them feel, instead of passively listening to a list of facts as they might do at other museums. The system allows tour guides to adjust tours based on the ages of the participants, which makes VTS especially useful for tour groups that include young children.
To promote Community Day, the Mead took out advertisements in local newspapers and magazines and put up signs around the Pioneer Valley. In addition, on the day of the event, docents were dispatched to the Amherst Farmers’ Market with balloons to hand out to families with children. The Center for Community Engagement partnered with the museum to help with promotion, and Amherst Cinema donated popcorn for visitors to enjoy. About 100 visitors attended the event over the course of the day.
“This was our first Community Day, and it was such a success that I think we have to make it a tradition,” Barker said.