Overview

The Wellin Museum welcomes K–12 school groups to engage with our exhibitions and collection. K–12 school visits are designed to encourage creative engagement with art through close looking, dialogue, and imaginative activities. Visiting the Wellin Museum of Art supports all areas of learning by helping students strengthen critical skills such as observing, describing, reasoning with evidence, questioning, connecting ideas, responding, and creating. 

Docents at the Wellin Museum

As a teaching museum, the Wellin Museum at Hamilton College is a site of experiential learning. K–12 school visits are led by docents, or educational guides, in collaboration with museum staff. The Wellin’s docents are Hamilton College students who have a wide range of academic backgrounds and an interest in teaching, museums, and art. They provide an engaging and personable experience for K–12 students as they gain valuable teaching experience.

Scheduling

The Wellin Museum of Art would be delighted to organize a visit for your group. K–12 school visits can be arranged Tuesday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m., when Hamilton College is in session. School visit availability is limited during Hamilton College’s holiday breaks: November 23–27, December 14–January 19, and March 15–26.

The museum can accommodate up to ninety students in one visit. Depending on the size of your group, it may be necessary to divide your students into smaller groups to accommodate everyone. Museum staff will design an itinerary that will ensure a positive learning environment for all students.

In order to accommodate as many groups as possible, we ask that all requests be made at least two weeks in advance of the intended visit date. 
Use this form to request a K–12 school visit.

The Wellin Museum is free and open to everyone. Wellin Museum K–12 School Visits are free of charge.

Homeschool Groups

The Wellin welcomes homeschool groups to participate in our K–12 Visit Program. Every effort will be made to tailor the visit topic and activities to the group's needs. Each homeschool visit will open with a fifteen-minute arrival and welcome period to allow all members of your group to arrive before the activities begin. For groups that include children with a wide range of ages, we can either develop activities for a mixed age group or split the group by age, according to your preferences. Children accompanying the group who are too young to participate in the activities are welcome to utilize the museum's lounge on the second floor with their caregiver. Children must be accompanied by an adult while inside the museum. 

Parking is available at the museum. Please take note of the museum's FAQs and visitor rules, listed on our Visit page, and discuss them with children before visiting. Submit a School Visit Request form to reserve your preferred date.

K–12 School Visit Topics

This year’s School Visits will be based on the exhibition Storytelling: Photographers Making Meaning | Works from the Wellin Museum’s Collection. All School Visits will include a hands-on artmaking component. Please feel free to indicate themes or areas that would be of interest to your class on the K–12 School Visit request form.

Please note: Students are welcome to bring cameras to create original photographs in the museum. The use of tripods and flash is prohibited.

 

PRIMARY

Every Picture Tells Stories
Recommended for grades K–5

A picture is worth a thousand words! Our primary school program will highlight artists who use photography in creative ways to tell stories. Students will immerse themselves in a large-scale photo installation, look closely at photos with captions, and find connections between photos made in series. Students will create a Scrapbook Story inspired by the exhibition combining cyanotype prints, instant photos, craft materials, and a written or dictated caption. Students will leave with one complete scrapbook page and teachers will receive a binder of their class's Scrapbook Stories.

 

LOWER SECONDARY 

Photo Stories: Step Inside a Photograph
Recommended for grades 6–8

Step inside a photograph at the Wellin Museum! Experience how photographs can become lifelike, both literally, through large-scale installation, and metaphorically, through the stories they inspire. In this workshop, participants will visualize musical performances through the art of Rhona Bitner, walk into a photograph through the art of Keisha Scarville, and explore how captions alter or enhance a photograph's meaning through the art of Bill Owens. Students will analyze photographs, write their own stories, and use their findings to create a three-dimensional photographic diorama—a reimagined photographic scene inspired by the art.

 

UPPER SECONDARY

Photographic Storytelling: How Photographers Make Meaning
Recommended for grades 9–12

Dive into photography at the Wellin Museum! Students will observe, discuss, and think critically about photographic series by twentieth- and twenty-first-century American artists. By exploring the relationships between artists and their subjects, examining techniques such as cropping and layering, and analyzing the use of captions, they will learn how photographs can be staged (or not) and constructed to convey specific meanings. Photography is ubiquitous, and this workshop will help students hone their ability to dissect the photos and videos that they interact with every day. Inspired by the exhibition, students will create an original photomontage artwork that incorporates pre-existing photographs using hands-on techniques.