One of the museum's goals is to help
educators teach young people about the contributions of women in the
arts. NMWA offers extensive Resources
for Educators, including publications, visual materials, and teacher
workshops.
In addition, NMWA currently coordinates two ongoing museum-school
partnerships.
Bridging Communities
Bridging Communities is a museum-school partnership that brings
students from two Washington, D.C., public schools together each
year to discover ways to express themselves and build relationships
through the arts. The program combines museum visits, lessons in
the classroom, meetings with visiting artists, group discussions,
and in-depth instruction in the arts, culminating with an exhibition
of the students' artwork in the Education Gallery.
The goal of the program is to create bridges between people of
different ages and cultures. Using the visual arts as a medium of
communication, Bridging Communities fosters active dialogue between
students and helps them realize how their own actions can contribute
to and shape the communities in which they live. Support for Bridging
Communities is provided by the Citigroup Foundation and the Leo
Rosner Foundation
Creative Writing Workshops
Authors participating in the museum's annual Literary Series lead
creative writing workshops for a targeted group of Washington, D.C.,
public high school students. During the three-hour workshops, students
discuss, write, ask questions, and share their own writing with
the group. The workshops provide the students with positive role
models, encourage individual creativity, foster a love of reading
and writing, and offer practical career guidance for aspiring young
writers.
Art, Books, and Communities
Art, Books, and Communities is a pilot project funded by
the U.S. Department of Education’s Arts Education Model Development
and Dissemination Program. The primary goals of the project are
to promote the acquisition of skills in creating and responding
to the visual arts; to further an interdisciplinary method of learning
through the arts; to expand the creativity, critical thinking, and
communication skills of the students; to transform the American
school arts curriculum into a model that includes information on
women artists; and to create a curriculum that can be widely replicated.
This project is being developed by NMWA in partnership with Arlington
Public Schools in Arlington, VA, and Albuquerque Public Schools
and the Albuquerque Museum of Art in Albuquerque, NM.
