“Museum staff help students make meaningful connections between history, culture, and creativity in ways that cannot be replicated in a classroom.”
—Maggie Kirby, art teacher, LeRoy Elementary School
Krannert Art Museum has a rich history of sustained, meaningful engagement with K–12 students and teachers throughout the Urbana-Champaign area, helping to create a sense of belonging and connection with the museum and its exhibitions on view. As part of a broader commitment to bringing the arts to communities with lesser access, the museum’s Community Engagement and Learning team regularly partners with rural classrooms, whose students often travel greater distances to access meaningful arts and cultural experiences.
What Can Art Museum Engagement Offer Rural K-12 Schools?
Many rural partnerships become consistent, long-term collaborations due to strong connections and leadership with partnering teachers. Maggie Kirby is the art teacher at LeRoy Elementary School, an annual partner with Krannert Art Museum for over seven years. LeRoy Elementary School has brought students on-site to engage with the museum’s galleries and exhibitions through play-based, interactive learning experiences. Kirby’s dedication to connecting her students with the museum also remained steady throughout the pandemic, when the museum pivoted to virtual tours over Zoom.
Reflecting on a recent field trip, Kirby shared that though “each part of the experience was engaging and educational on multiple levels—from expanding students’ worldviews to interacting with artwork, artifacts, historical objects, tools, and movement activities . . . Krannert Art Museum staff help students make meaningful connections between history, culture, and creativity in ways that cannot be replicated in a classroom.”
Rural partnerships are plentiful at Krannert Art Museum. In the past two years alone, the museum has hosted field trips for students from Oakwood (Vermilion County), Watseka (Iroquois), Tuscola (Douglas), Arthur (Douglas/Moultrie), Lovington (Moultrie), Atwood (Douglas/Piatt), Hammond (Piatt), Georgetown (Vermilion), Mansfield (Piatt), Farmer City (DeWitt), and Bellflower (McLean).
In addition to regular field trips and tours, the museum expanded its ArtReach initiative (first launched at Booker T. Washington STEM Academy in Champaign) to Blue Ridge Intermediate and Junior High School in Mansfield, Illinois. ArtReach is Krannert Art Museum’s in-depth school partnership program that brings museum educators into classrooms and students into the museum—centering schools in rural, low-income, and underrepresented communities.
In collaboration with English language arts teacher Karisa Yeagle, museum educators led a six-week, social justice–informed arts-based curriculum for seventh graders at Blue Ridge Intermediate and Junior High School. From museum visits to hands-on workshops at school, students used art as a lens to reflect on the role of creativity in understanding the world around them and building community.
To launch our partnership, seventh graders from Blue Ridge Intermediate and Junior High School dove deep into art and activism through a six-week ArtReach residency with Krannert Art Museum’s Community Engagement and Learning team. Led by Kamila Glowacki and Grace Bae, students explored works by Nick Cave, Angel Starr, and Nnenna Okore and responded by creating their own zines. Their final creations debuted at the school’s Museum Night—an annual event transforming the halls into a gallery of student-led projects celebrating influential women.
These partnerships show how art museum engagement can create meaningful opportunities for rural students to connect creativity, history, and their own lived experiences beyond the classroom. Through sustained relationships with teachers and schools, Krannert Art Museum works to ensure that students from rural communities feel at home when they walk through our doors.
Author: Kamila Glowacki, Assistant Curator of Community Engagement and Learning
