Getty Brings Art Education into the Virtual Classroom

Getty Virtual Art Explorations will provide live arts education online

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Aug 27, 2020

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If your K–12 class can’t come to the Getty this year, the Getty will come to you.

The J. Paul Getty Museum is launching Getty Virtual Art Explorations, a virtual teaching program that provides live arts education online.

Getty Virtual Explorations is an interactive, collection-based, object-focused experience with students. The program uses a discovery and inquiry-based approach to teaching, and was created to provide arts education in the virtual classroom. Using Zoom, Getty is also able to extend its reach both locally and globally, opening new doors and connecting with future visitors.

“In a normal year, Getty welcomes 150,000 K–12 students for guided visits to our museums at the Getty Center and Getty Villa,” says Keishia Gu, Head of Education at the Getty Museum. “Obviously this not a normal year, and it’s been our top priority to develop a program that allows us to maintain our engagement with K-12 students, even if it can’t be in person.”

Following the success of a pilot program this summer with the Los Angeles Unified School District and Inner-City Education Foundation (ICEF), the Museum’s Education team is expanding the program to include additional school districts and home school networks in Southern California.

“There was a connection between us, the teacher, and the students that we could still feel even though the session was virtual,” said Getty Educators Kelly Jane Smith-Fatten and Meganne Drake, “Students were excited and followed along in the looking exercises, the physical activities, and were active in sharing questions and thoughts. It is very exciting to be developing and exploring new ways to access the collection in these Zoom sessions. We are so grateful to have worked with these classrooms!”

Getty Virtual Art Explorations leverages available technology that allows students to observe details in an artwork more closely than they could in the gallery, with Getty educators facilitating an interactive discussion about objects in the Getty collection.

Daily classes for hundreds of students are being offered to grades K–12, with lessons on a variety of subjects. The virtual program runs 30 minutes for grades TK-2 and 45 minutes for all others. The lessons are interactive, collection-based, object-focused experiences with students, using a discovery-and inquiry-based approach.

Similar to the Getty’s Arts Access program, which in previous years allowed teachers to sign up for fieldtrips, educators are able to sign up for Getty Virtual Art Explorations online. Reservations open September 8.

Read more information about the program here; additional questions can be sent to [schoolcoordinators@getty.edu](mailto: schoolcoordinators@getty.edu).

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