laid out definite work involving a study of the implements and utensils of primitive peoples, and tracing in a broad way the development of modern civilization from these humble beginnings. An effort was made to bring children to an appreciation of the material life (food, housing, clothing, means of existence), psychic life (games, recreation, fine arts, religion, myths, science), and social life (home life, war and commerce, social organizations, international organization) of primitive peoples. The Children's Museum of Brooklyn began with the geology of Long Island as showing how the land was prepared for the people, and passed to a consideration of the early peoples, savage and civilized, who occupied the island in the early periods of history, leading up in this way to the Dutch rule, British rule, the Revolution, etc. The Worcester Art Museum endeavored especially to acquaint the children with buildings of different countries and periods by presenting them as expressions of the life and circumstances of the people, and to arouse interest in the buildings of Worcester by showing the traditions under which they were produced. Story-telling was one of the chief methods of presentation adopted by all the museums. These papers aroused intense interest among museum workers and will probably lead to more extensive experiments during the coming year. EXTENSION WORK OF ART MUSEUMS. Museums of art are growing rapidly in appreciation of the importance of entering more intimately into the life of the people. This is well illustrated by the increased use of docents-members of the staff assigned to act as guides and instructors in the galleries. Docent service was introduced at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1907, and is now widely used in art museums. Other methods of giving instruction in art to the general public and to schools are coming into prominence in all the more active art museums and indicate a radical change in the conception of the functions of the museum. These new ideas are expressed in many of the activities of the older art museums, but are especially conspicuous in some of the newer museums, whose organization is naturally more plastic. The history and present work of the Toledo Museum of Art afford one of the best illustrations of the value of close relations between the museum and the people. Organized only 10 years ago by 120 men who each subscribed $10 annually, the museum made up for what it lacked in collections by the intimate way in which it cultivated the interest of the people. To this policy must be attributed in large measure its flourishing condition at the end of the first decade. It now occupies a beautiful building in the heart of the residential part of Toledo. The building and grounds represent an expenditure of $400,000, one-half of which was the gift of the president, Mr. Edward Drummond Libbey; the other half was raised by popular subscription in sums ranging from 10 cents to $15,000. All classes of citizens contributed-merchants, bankers, school children, members of women's clubs, artists, students, and the men and women of the factories. The support which the people have given to this museum seems adequately explained by the summary of its educational work as reported by the director, Mr. George W. Stevens: Noon hour talks on art and travel in the factories. Illustrated evening talks in public school buildings for neighborhood parents. Annual exhibits of the art and manual training work of the pupils of the public schools, to which pupils and their parents are invited free. Free Saturday classes in drawing for children. Free Saturday classes in drawing for teachers of the public schools who wish to become more proficient. Weekly criticism of the prints of amateur photographers for the purpose of teaching them composition. Paintings in the museum used as illustrations. Weekly art history study clubs conducted in connection with the Federation of Women's Clubs. Weekly art history study classes made up of society debutantes. Monthly evening receptions at the museum for working girls and their escorts. Light refreshments sometimes served and a musical program occasionally introduced. Special nights and talks for colored people. Daily talks in the galleries on various subjects to groups of school children. A Toledo Collector's League made up of small boys collecting anything, who meet at the museum four times a month for exchange of specimens, study, and amusement. Evening life classes during the winter months. Band and orchestral concerts in the museum and on the museum grounds. The maintenance of a public information and research bureau giving assistance to school children and club women in the preparation of papers on art, etc. Sunday afternoon talks to the general public in the galleries on the paintings hanging at the time. Special evenings and talks for employees of department stores, etc. Many of our activities are varied and changeable, each day bringing its new suggestions and necessities. We aim to keep the museum beating in unison with the pulse of the community. If we note in the morning paper that a convention is to be held in the city, we invite the delegates to the museum and arrange for their transportation. We cooperate with the chamber of commerce, churches, schools, and manufacturers. During the year 1913-14 there were three special educational activities of more than usual importance, as follows: First. A City-Beautiful Campaign, instructing all citizens and school children how to beautify their dwellings, vacant lots, etc., by means of simple landscape gardening. Thirty thousand people heard lectures. Fifty thousand booklets were distributed. Two hundred and fifty-five cash prizes were awarded. Two hundred thousand packages of seeds were sold. Second. A Child Welfare Exhibit attended by 50,000 visitors. Fifteen galleries devoted to exhibits illustrating in many ways the activities of the child and suggesting hundreds of improvements in the conditions surrounding the children of the city. Third. A movement for the preservation and protection of desirable birds. Illustrated lectures given. Bird houses constructed by the manual training pupils. Arrangements for a bird-day celebration when thousands of bird houses will be properly located. Plans for feeding birds during the winter, the building of bird shelters, etc. The scope of this work extends far beyond the general conception. of an art museum and approaches closely what the museum of the future may be expected to be-a center of many community activities, closely coordinated with the life of the people and with every organization related in purpose to the field of the museum. The history of the Toledo Museum is a most conspicuous illustration of the ready response which the people will make to advances from the museums. In few instances have these advances been made so earnestly, but where they have the response has been as ready in proportion to the resources of the community. Even museum workers are slow in realizing that the policies and methods of all museums should be fundamentally identical, whether the material treated belong to the field of art or history or science. In the smaller communities one institution must include all; in larger communities each subject will have its separate museum, but when each of these museums works in harmony with the others for the common purpose of serving the people, museums will occupy a much larger place in the estimation of the public, and will inevitably receive municipal support in increasing measure. Dependence upon tax appropriations and private contributions has been the most potent factor in the revivification of museums, and will continue to mold their policy to the benefit of both the public and the museums. BRANCH MUSEUMS. The difficulty, danger, and expense of bringing large numbers of children frequently to the museums in cities led to the adoption of such forms of museum extension as traveling exhibits and lectures outside the museum. The problem now pressing for solution is that of providing branch museums or centers of museum extension work. Miss Anna B. Gallup, curator of the Children's Museum of Brooklyn, referring to the length of time that would be required for the school children of Brooklyn even to walk in procession through the museum, suggested the necessity of taking the material to the children in their local centers. The Commercial Museum, in Philadelphia, has already established the first of eight or ten such centers, some of them 15 miles apart. It was at first proposed that the lectures should be in charge of teachers assigned from the schools, but the museum was unwilling to undertake the work unless it could have the lecturers entirely under its control and keep them under instruction in the museum a part of the time. This was finally conceded. The 1 Proc. Am. Assoe. Mus. VIII, 1914, p. 54. museum provides a moving-picture outfit, lantern, slides, and material to illustrate the lectures, and has full control.1 The American Museum of Natural History, in New York, announced in June, 1914, that final plans for opening 10 local lecture centers had been submitted to the trustees and to the board of education. The lectures will be delivered by the museum staff of 18 lecturers and will be mainly on geographical, historical, and industrial subjects. A system of lending lantern slides for use in classrooms will be established, and a branch museum in the Washington Irving High School will be a local museum for the lower east side of the city. These large extensions of the educational services of museums indicate the importance and the progressive spirit of their cooperation with the schools. ENDOWMENTS FOR EDUCATIONAL WORK. The Field Museum of Natural History, in Chicago, has established a special educational department for cooperation with the public schools. This action was made possible by an endowment of $250,000 given by Mr. Norman W. Harris in December, 1911. The income from this endowment is to be used to maintain a system of museum extension to the public schools of Chicago.3 Since this is apparently the first endowment for general educational work with schools, it is interesting to note the purpose of Mr. Harris, as stated by Mr. S. C. Simms, curator of the N. W. Harris Public School Extension: Mr. Harris has a deeper purpose even than the education of the young in natural science. He believes that if a scheme can be devised, and this is suggested as one, whereby the textbooks may be given life, may be vitalized, and the younger minds of society given attractive fields in which to extend their imaginative and reasoning faculties, better citizenship will develop in the community, and more stable civic conditions be promised. To certain children study is drudgery and school work toil, and they grow up in opposition to established rules and a compliance with them. This attitude of habitual disagreement takes different and often dangerous forms as the child matures, and we have then an enemy of society as an organization. Mr. Harris believes that a mind interested is a mind tranquil, and that the habit of acquiring knowledge is like any other habit. If this habit can be made attractive and pleasing at first, it is more apt to continue. This new department has already begun actual work in a limited way. Two hundred cases of zoological, geological, and botanical material are in circulation. The bird cases contain male and female, nest with eggs or young or both, and sometimes an economic feature 'See remarks of Dr. W. P. Wilson, Proc. Am. Assoc. Mus., VIII, 1914, p. 57. in the way of food materials. Popular labels of 250 to 300 words are used. Delivery to the schools is made by automobile. It is to be hoped that the example of Mr. Harris will be followed by others and thus lead to a new epoch in the educational work of museums. MUSEUM EXTENSION IN PENNSYLVANIA. The Commercial Museum, in Philadelphia, occupies in several respects a unique position. It includes museum collections illustrating the products and peoples of the world, amplified by free lectures and educational work in the museum, and by loan lectures and miniature museums distributed throughout the State of Pennsylvania. It conducts a foreign trade bureau for the development of the international commerce of the United States. The correspondents of this bureau throughout the world enable the museum to acquire information and material of unusual value in commerce and industry. The nature and scope of the museum is thus unique. It is also unique in that it receives appropriations from both the city council and the State legislature. The extent of the educational work of this museum throughout Pennsylvania and the conditions under which it has developed can not be better told than in the words of the director, Dr. W. P. Wilson, whose broad vision and indomitable energy have made the work possible. He says:1 The Commercial Museum began 10 years or more ago to try to reach the children of Philadelphia. It first prepared a collection of about 400 objects and 100 photographs to illustrate basic materials in commerce. These things were packed in a big box in such a way that any teacher could repack them. This box was sent out as an experiment to one of the schools. The intention was to leave it there 10 days and then have the wagon take it on to the next school. We had arranged a series of schools to which it should go, but when we called for the collection the school did not want to let it go, and we very soon found that we could not take these collections away after 10 days without ill feeling. We decided that the plan was not practical and gave it up after a few exhibits had been prepared. Later we prepared collections which we put into the schools and left there permanently. We were so poor in the beginning that we solicited gifts of manufacturing materials from various firms in order to make these exhibits. Finally, we got an appropriation of $30,000 to put these collections in the schools throughout the State during the next two years. We give them to the schools with all necessary information and instructions. Many of them go into the little country districts, where the schools are not graded at all; in fact, we try to get them into these schools in preference to any others. The work has gone along in this way until we estimate that we are reaching about 75,000 children in the State each year in one way or another. In addition to these collections, we have another systematic work which consists in sending lectures with lantern slides and lanterns to the different schools. We went a step further. We procured lanterns that in the first instance were run with kerosene, because they went into little remote schools where the teacher prob 1 Proc. Am. Assoc. Mus., VIII, 1914, pp. 55–56. |