Abstract:

A paper considers modern trends and different directions of art museums’ activities in the USA. Rapidly developed during last decades as the modern tendency in current education, the museum pedagogy plays a significant role in forming a distinct socio-educational environment for students. The paper considers the system of art museums present in American Art Education, from types of art museums, to museums projects and workshops. Based on J. Dewey’s concept of the aesthetic experience development, L. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and M. Bakhtin’s theory of the dialogic space, an author analyzes the entire system of socio-cultural collaboration between educational institutions and art museums.

Using technologies and all advantages of the cyber era, the museum pedagogy represents the reality of interpersonal communication and develops students’ social skills. It could be said that nowadays a teaching space is moving from an enclosed classroom to the entire structure of a museum.There are many factors modern museum educators work on. For example, generating a specific creative atmosphere of the museum environment, or new interactive ways to represent and display art objects. Nowadays museum, and especially art museums, are not silent anymore. In contrary, museum pedagogy develops educational concepts that help to open museums for children and families as community places for different social activities, creative workshops, and cultural events.

Working with art objects, being supported by professionals who are ready to create a dialogue, modern students are studying the human values, concepts of the beauty altogether with developing social skills of communication in the multi-cultural society. The paper reflects the impact of museums’ activities to the personal development of modern school students.