What We Do

We empower our students, and our tour guides, to feel not just comfort but ownership in museums that often feel intimidating and exclusionary. We show students that the Met, a great museum in their city, reflects and values all identities and experiences, and we encourage students to expand their idea of what art looks like by introducing them to diverse mediums, forms, artists, and origins.

We connect the College and the larger city community. The students of PS96 have gone on our tours since 2015, and some have now spent many days with us at the Met. We hope to continue to foster relationships with students that span their education, cultivating a lifelong appreciation for museums that they can share with family and friends on trips they take outside our tours.

We celebrate the diverse cultures of our students, bringing them to the foreground and placing them on an equal plane. This might be a unique moment in a child’s education—where they see their own history alongside that of Colonial America, Edo Japan, or Ancient Greece. We bring our students to every wing of the Met.

We value diversity and inclusion 

• We actively work to challenge the colonialist narrative that structures the art world, and major art institutions like the Met. 

• The majority of our students are low-income and BIPOC. We run Identity Workshops for all guides every year where we discuss how art can reflect or exclude us, how our experiences shape the way we see and discuss art, and how we can be as inclusive and understanding as possible in our tours. 

• Meet Me at the Museum grapples with the fact that the institutions it works with, specifically the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have histories rooted in the theft and appropriation of art from colonized places, and have flourished on the destruction and exploitation of native land.

Why We Do It

MMatM is motivated by the view that arts education is a right and not a privilege. That is, students of every race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background have not just equal access on paper, but more importantly the right to feel comfortable in museums, see themselves positively reflected in the art , and feel empowered to visit these places again and again. We work hard to develop racially and culturally expansive curricula that reflect the lives and experiences of the diverse students we work with.

MM@M hopes to bolster arts education for NY public schools, and specifically Title I schools, by providing complementary tours that are specifically designed with ideals of inclusion, equity, and the recognition of difficult histories.

Our Strategy:

What Do You See?

Our tours offer more than art history lessons. They require constant, active participation from students, which makes them so memorable and impactful. We are not distant authority figures telling our students what to think. We are genuinely interested in what our students have to say, and in the parallels they draw between art and to their personal lives. We trust our students and emphasize the significance of their thoughts and opinions.

On every tour, we ask the question: “What do you see?” This question encompasses the values we hope to instill in our students and tour guides. An official art history education is not necessary to appreciate, learn from, and simply enjoy art. What each student sees is new and specific to their lives and experiences. Their observations and opinions are valid and worthwhile. A museum provides endless opportunities for education and growth.

You can practice this too.

Ask yourself: