The Docent: Unsung and Unpaid Hero of the Museum --or-No, I actually do this for fun. Jason D.

Nosek Composed for LIS 885 Introduction to Cultural Heritage Resources Dominican University, Graduate School of Library and Information Science

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Walking through Claude Monets gardens in Giverny, France, one would never know that the Impressionist planted and arranged his gardens according to the scheme of his palette, nor that the stretch of road that runs adjacent to his property was the first paved road in his town, as he financed it due to his distaste for the way the dust kickedup on the dirt road settled on his flowers and water lilies. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a visitor to London admiring the Houses of Parliament would be ignorant as to its near destruction by the Gunpowder Plot, and the subsequent gory details of the torture, execution, and quartering of the conspirators, and the holiday created for this event known as Guy Fawkes Day. The reason I am privy to this information, is not because I had a mobile app, purchased costly guide books, or read a plaque on a wall. Rather, I had well-informed and enthusiastic amateur tour guides. The human element-a visitor connecting with an educator and fellow visitors--is what made these experiences memorable, so much so that I recall these visits in terms of quotes and anecdotes rather than plaques, signs, or books. The point of all of this of course, is to say that in an age of seemingly boundless, ever evolving technology, museum and cultural heritage professionals would be best served to remember the human element in education, and the difference it can make in a visit to an institution or site. After all, in addition to preservation, a primary role of the museum or cultural heritage site is education. As John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking argue in their work Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning, learning is the reason people go to museums, and learning is the primary

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good that visitors to museums derive from their experience. In large part responding to both of these realities, the museum community currently justifies and boldly promotes itself as a bedrock member of the learning community.1 What ever you call them-guides, volunteer educators, gallery interpreters, or the most common in our parlance-docents--these are the educators on the front lines that can make all the difference in the world to a visitor, often transforming what may be anticipated as a stuffy, boring place to a vibrant, living world. While there is a dearth of information regarding the role of the docent in the museum environment, the following pages will discuss who/what docents are, how they function within the institution, and conclude with examples of the myriad museums that actualize the use of docents. The number of museums in the United States is growing and with this comes the demand for engaging, worthwhile, and even entertaining educational programming. This need requires museums to call on volunteers to serve as docents and interpreters of objects and exhibits.2 So who are these people that are in such high demand? You may see them as the polite individuals wearing ask me! buttons giving free or inexpensive tours; however, we will go into slightly greater detail. For the most part, they are volunteers, i.e. generally unpaid but perhaps receiving some type of fringe benefits.3 Quite often (as museums and cultural heritage institutions are ordinarily anemic when it comes to finances), docents have to actually pay out of pocket to become a guide; in some cases, museums require a specialized volunteer training
John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning (New York: AltaMira Press, 2000): 2. 2 Robin S. Grenier, The Role of Learning in the Development of Expertise in Museum Docents, Adult Education Quarterly 59.2 (2009): 142. 3 Frederick G. Ortner, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester: An Instrument of Art Education, Art Journal 37.3 (1978): 214. Nosek 3
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program at a moderate fee. While not professional educators, docents are often subject specialists, self-taught in their own areas of interest. Of this sometime educator/sometime learner nature of the docent, Professor of Adult Learning Robin S. Grenier writes, ...being a docent is intertwined with one's museum experiences and serves as a basis for questioning, exploring, and experiencing museums... It also illustrates the unique position of docents as adult educators, as well as adult learners of their work as a docent and museum enthusiast.4 In addition to being a volunteer and a self-taught subject specialist, the docent usually works hand-in-hand with museum staff and makes a commitment to continuous development.5 Moving along to the function and usefulness of docents within the museum and cultural heritage institution setting, we will see that there is a number of ways that they behave as facilitators of information. The first is by acting as a bridge of sorts, and connecting visitors to the collection.6 This may seem obvious, but as all learners are not the same, the institution may be doing a disservice to its patrons if they expect them to make connections with exhibits simply by viewing objects and their respective placards. In a poignant (albeit dated) article, artist and educator Frederick G. Ortner details the various ways he has observed docents tackle the challenging task of connecting children to art:

Grenier, The Role of Learning in the Development of Expertise in Museum Docents, 143. G. Ellis Burcaw, Introduction to Museum Work 3rd Ed. (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1998): 47. 6 Grenier, The Role of Learning in the Development of Expertise in Museum Docents, 143. This eloquent conceptual framework of bridging object/exhibit and visitor was discussed by Grenier, but the term was apparently coined in the following: Scott-Foss, C. A. (1994). A content analysis of ten docent-led student yours in four art museums in the southeastern United States. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Georgia, Athens.
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Docents in front of a work of art may ask the children to try to express its mood by using their bodies. Or they may discuss subject matter, ask the children which picture they would like to live in, talk about the way of life a painting represents, point out similar formal elements in different objects, encourage the children to identify with the person represented in a portrait, explain the materials and techniques used in the making of a work of art, and try to get the children to equate an object with a physical sensation.7 Child or adult, facilitating meaning-making by helping visitors to connect to the institutions collection is a central task of the docent, thus making he/she invaluable to the educational institution. In addition to connecting people to the collection, docents often work as mediators, helping visitors relate to one another. These tour guides have the power to break the ice, set the mood, and create a convivial atmosphere for sharing and contemplating within a group. With regard to this sociocultural context, Falk and Dierking point out, ...research suggests that efforts to facilitate interactions between visitors, whether school, family, or tour groups, and staff for the purpose of sharing and building upon each others knowledge can be rewarding both personally and intellectually for visitors.8 Also, by virtue of the fact that they are not professionals working in the field that they are presenting on, docents may very well bring fresh perspectives and new ideas, and thus are more relatable to the lay visitor.9 Lastly, and quite importantly, docents are free (or cheap) labor. As mentioned earlier, museums and cultural heritage institutions have a long history of being underfunded. The reality is, by the time curators and professionals are paid, along with support staff, not to mention the overhead, most museums simply cannot afford to pay a small army of tour
Ortner, Memorial Art Gallery, 214. Falk and Dierking, Learning from Museums, 194. 9 W. Christine Choi, How Students Transform a Stuffy Building with a Bunch of Rules, Art Education 51.2 (1998): 49.
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guides. Docents, being enthusiastic and informative volunteers and interns, offer a solution to what would be an educational short-coming of an institution. In the third edition of his work Introduction to Museum Work, G. Ellis Burcaw points out, volunteer services (which of course, are free) are so important at many museums that without them the museums would have to curtail their programs seriously or even close their doors.10 Clearly, in addition to being useful as facilitators and mediators, docents are invaluable in that they cost institutions virtually nothing while doing so much. Lastly, as the docent has now been described in terms of character and function, it is possible to take a look at some institutions that utilize docents in their programs. Grenier notes that in 2002, 88% of American museums offered its visitors guided tours, most of which were led by unpaid docents.11 Locally, and nationally, docents are hard at work in scores of museums. For instance, in terms of art, the Art Institute of Chicago,12 the New Museum in New York City,13 and the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida all use unpaid docents as tour guides and interpreters.14 Similarly, cultural institutions without brick-and-mortar museums and the like rely almost entirely on volunteers; in 2010, the Chicago Architecture Foundation placed their mission in the hands of 480 volunteer docents.15 Zoos--museums with living collections--also frequently employ docents as educators; the Chicago Zoological Societys Brookfield

Burcaw, Introduction to Museum Work, 46. Grenier, The Role of Learning in the Development of Expertise in Museum Docents, 143. 12 Docent-Led Tours, Art Institute of Chicago, accessed November 30, 2011, http://www.artic.edu/aic/education/tours/types_tours/docent_tours/guided.html. 13 Tours, New Museum, accessed December 01, 2011, http://newmuseum.org/learn/tours. 14 Gallery Tours, The Dali Museum, accessed November 30, 2011, http://thedali.org/visit/gallery_tours.html. 15 Chicago Architecture Foundation Facts, Chicago Architecture Foundation, accessed December 1, 2011, http://www.architecture.org/page.aspx?pid=223
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Zoo has an extensive docent training program in which the volunteers learn to discuss the collection and relay important information about conservation to visitors.16 Finally, libraries too rely on the help of docents to conduct tours of their often cavernous central branches; the Seattle Public Library17 and the New York Public library are two of these.18 Clearly, no matter what type of museum or institution, docents are omnipresent, always guiding groups and relaying valuable information that may otherwise be missed. In closing, it is clear that docents--volunteer guides and exhibit interpreters--are invaluable to museums and cultural heritage institutions. The foremost role of these organizations is that of education, and having readily available tour guides to facilitate learning is certainly an immediate way to communicate that educational mission.19 Signage, plaques, virtual exhibits, and mobile apps are nice, but without the human element, visitors may very well leave the institution unfulfilled and unchanged.

Docents, The Chicago Zoological Society, accessed December 1, 2011, http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/czs/getdoc/f73a3164-32fa-495a-a369-04c6f6bb251f/Docents.aspx. 17 Tours of Central Library, Seattle Public Library, accessed November 30, 2011, http://www.spl.org/locations/central-library/cen-plan-a-visit/central-library-tours. 18 Stephen A. Schwarzman Building Tours, New York Public Library, accessed November 30, 2011, http://www.nypl.org/events/tours/schwarzman. 19 Falk and Dierking, Learning from Museums, 107. Nosek 7

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