Guided School Tours: Gallery Explorations
Guided School Tours: Gallery Explorations
Please note that all school groups (including self-guided groups [1]) must register using the online form.
Bring your students to the CMA for an hour-long experience that sparks curiosity, challenges your students to consider the possibilities of art, and builds social-emotional skills by connecting them with artworks and each other.
Before You Register:
- Please allow two weeks’ notice when registering for a program. Four weeks’ notice is required for special-request topics.
- Tours are scheduled from Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
- Gallery Explorations are free of charge. To help the museum support its education programs, schools will receive an invoice with a $5 per student suggested donation. Any donation you contribute helps to ensure equitable learning opportunities for all. Please note that special-request topics have a fee of $100 per 25 students.
- An adult chaperone for every ten students must accompany each group.
- Please note that lunch spaces at the museum are limited and not guaranteed.
- To help prepare your students for their upcoming visit, please view A Visit to the Museum [3], a social story and guide.
- Directions and parking information can be found here [4].
- For more information, please email SchoolPrograms [at] clevelandart.org.
Look and Discover
Explore the museum’s galleries through this general introductory tour designed to examine artworks from many time periods and cultures.
In this experience, students may do the following:
- Make observations and develop their own interpretations of artworks
- Relate knowledge and personal experiences to build connections between art and their lives
- Identify and describe artists’ personal connections to their communities and cultures through art
Creativity and Problem-Solving
Investigate ways that artists have experimented and solved problems throughout time. Through design- and play-based activities in the galleries, practice using creativity to solve problems of your own.
In this experience, students may do the following:
- Make observations, develop ideas, and compare findings with other collaborators in the group
- Construct arguments, explanations, or design solutions by creating a prototype or sketch to demonstrate ideas
- Develop a comfort with ambiguity in order to understand that there may be multiple possibilities, solutions, and ideas related to a challenge
Expressing Ideas
Discover how artists communicate ideas and messages through their art in order to consider ways to express your own ideas.
In this experience, students may do the following:
- Examine and analyze how artists visually express their ideas and communicate messages
- Investigate how artists use materials, words, and images to convey meaning
- Examine artworks as primary sources to consider what they reveal about the time period or culture in which they were made
Historic Connections
Use artworks from many time periods and places as primary sources and relate discoveries to your own lives.
In this experience students may do the following:
- Relate artworks with cultural and historical contexts
- Examine, interpret, and critique artworks as primary sources
- Evaluate multiple opinions and viewpoints about artworks and historical events to acknowledge that people have a variety of perspectives on the world
Social-Emotional Learning through Art
Explore ways art can support students’ social-emotional learning.
In this experience, students may do the following:
- Identify emotions and consider how the outside world impacts the emotions we feel
- Discover strategies to help process emotions through slow-looking and coping techniques while viewing artworks
- Investigate a variety of cultures and perspectives and consider what we can learn from others
Special Request
Do you have a classroom project or theme that you want to explore at the museum? Register for a guided special-request experience. Please provide a brief summary of your project when registering.
Special Exhibitions
Experience one of the museum’s special exhibitions through an interactive guided experience. Please note that some special exhibitions are not available for school and group tours.
All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Major annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Walter E. Fortney, Florence Kahane Goodman, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, the Lloyd D. Hunter Memorial Fund, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Mandi Rickelman, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Sally and Larry Sears Fund for Education Endowment, Roy Smith, the Trilling Family Foundation, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.
Education programs are supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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