PAST Projects & Research

InterGenerational ArtMath at the Museum (IGAMM) brought together children, their grandparents, art museum education curators, and TERC researchers to explore the connections between math and art through ArtMath experiences at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA. Three organizations collaborated in this project: The Athens Community Council on Aging through the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Project, the Georgia Museum of Art, and TERC. The project worked with education curators at the museum to develop skills to take advantage of the privileged resources of the museum to provide rich ArtMath experiences for both children and grandparents through activities that were respectful of the art and promote aesthetic enjoyment, and that at the same time pushed participants to think mathematically, helping participants improve their attitudes and self-confidence toward math. The activities included self-directed museum tours, classroom activities, gallery activities, and guided tours.

TERC researchers conducted observations of the activities, a photo elicitation focus group with grandparents, and two interviews with the education curators at the museum.

Participating grandparents and grandchildren developed increased comfort in talking about math and broadened their understanding about what “counts” as math.

Education curators developed skills to bring out the math in the museum’s art and learned how to infuse math into the museum’s activities.

Jaumot-Pascual, N. (2023). “That’s just something I was playing with.” Math talk and avoidance in an art museum. Proceedings of the Education and New Developments Conference, Portugal, Vol. I, 633-637. https://end-educationconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Education-and-New-Developments_2023_Vol_I.pdf