Art and the Basic Curriculum

A museum-school collaboration

Art and the Basic Curriculum (ABC) is a museum-school collaboration in its thirty-third consecutive year of continuous service at The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Since its inception in 1979, ABC has grown from a program that served 120 students and was conducted by volunteers, to a program that will serve 1,400 fourth grade students and 50 teachers this year. This museum-school partnership brings quality art education to Title 1 schools in the Memphis area.

The goals of ABC are to increase exposure to the visual arts and the art museum, encourage students to make connections between art, their lives, and the academic curriculum, and to foster the development of important 21st century skills including creativity, communication, critical thinking, and collaboration. While students reap the benefits of art intergration, teachers recieve detailed lessons plans that include curriculum standards, objectives established with Bloom's Taxonomy, vocabulary words, and ideas for fostering intedisciplinary connections and 21st century skills in the classroom. The ABC program includes five sessions with a museum educator throughout the school year: three in the regular school classroom and two at the Brooks.

For more information about ABC please contact the Assistant Curator of Education at 901.544.6245 or click here for email.

Art in the Basic Curriculum (ABC) is generously sponsored by ArtsMemphis, Tennessee Arts Commission, Robert and Martha Fogelman Charitable Trust, International Paper Foundation, St. Mary's Community Fund, and an Anonymous funder.