The ART MUSEUM AS EDUCATOR a discussion of he Client Centered Structure of the Children's Museum, Boston

Council on Museums and Education in the Visual Arts., Barbara Y. Newsom, and Adele Z. Silver. The Art Museum as Educator : A Collection of Studies as Guides to Practice and Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

In 1978 Barbara Newson and Adele Silver were founded to travel around the country and do case studies of exemplorary museums.  They chose the Boston Children’s Museum as one of their studies.  In part because the director, Michael Spock, had been so innovative in the museum he was leading and his belief that administrative structure had to match the philosophy of the institution.  I was, at that time, the director of the Visitor Center, having come in 1971. It was a pleasure to be in that position.

Barbara and Adele seemed very elegant and grown-up to me at the time and I had no idea about the nature of the book or the position it would occupy in museum literature.  It turned out to be important and useful because it was one of the first pieces of museum literature to think that the public was an important focus of our work.

in 2011 I came upon this link in Google Book where the reader can read the chapter they wrote about the Boston Children’s Museum of the time.  How lucky we are to have this word picture and I feel honored to be included in the chapter.