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William Bonifas Fine Arts Center
Escanaba, MI
The William Bonifas Fine Arts Center enriched its self-guided tours and school tours by developing age-specific scavenger hunts for elementary students, adult visitors, and seniors. These resources provided new interactive opportunities for K–12 students, college students, and drop-in guests. Additionally, the Bonifas Arts Center updated its Creative Corner, a drop-in studio space, so that all visitors can enjoy hands-on activities that reinforce gallery viewing.
The Bonifas Arts Center’s intent was to build upon the Detroit Institute of Arts school packet—designed to fit into the state’s 10th-grade social studies curriculum—to create specialized tours for 750 high school social studies students.
The original plan did not work out, and high schools did not respond due to difficulties with transportation and scheduling. Instead, the Bonifas Arts Center invited all area schools and home-schooled students within two county school districts to tour the exhibit and designed scavenger hunts using the Detroit Institute of Arts school packet. These materials and tours reached 950 visitors.
When planning a touring exhibit with a tight turnaround, build flexibility into your approach and prepare a backup plan. If original resources or school participation fall through, consider adapting materials for self-guided tours and leveraging staff as temporary docents to maintain engagement. Strong contingency planning ensures the project remains successful even when initial strategies don’t unfold as expected.
The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) partnered with artist Mandy Cano Villalobos and Deos Contemporary Ballet to create an interdisciplinary, interactive program that invited middle and high school students to engage in exhibition tours, ballet performances with movement activities, and hands-on artmaking projects.
Tours incorporated science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics for students from Huntsville City Schools, and bus transportation was provided for each participating school.
The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) partnered with artist Mandy Cano Villalobos and Deos Contemporary Ballet to create an interdisciplinary, interactive program that invited middle and high school students to engage in exhibition tours, ballet performances with movement activities, and hands-on artmaking projects.
Tours incorporated science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics for students from Huntsville City Schools, and bus transportation was provided for each participating school.