The official docent anniversary celebration took place at a private event on Sunday, May 15, 2016 at the Museum. The celebration included proclamations from both mayor of Ann Arbor, Christopher Taylor (PDF), and U-M President Mark Schlissel (PDF).
Docents are volunteer educators and museum guides, and serve on a voluntary basis. UMMA’s docent program began in 1975 when a group of volunteers approached then UMMA Director Brett Waller and put into place a comprehensive recruiting, training, and evaluation system.
Today, UMMA docents provides free educational classes and tours to an average of 11,000 people per year, contributing upwards of 5,000 hours annually in volunteer service towards the educational mission of the University of Michigan and the Museum of Art.
"Docents are integral to the teaching and learning mission of UMMA, make possible the school tour program, and actively expand and enrich our university offerings,” UMMA Director Joseph Rosa says. “We are honored to celebrate their anniversary and look forward to posting highlights of their story this year.”
UMMA docents recruit motivated and multi-talented volunteers. Those volunteers receive training from the Museum’s education and other staff in collection areas and gallery teaching. Docents are also taught art history, world religions, and culture by U-M faculty.
In recent years, UMMA’s docent program has helped the Museum’s education staff to create initiatives such as Meet Me at UMMA, a program that offers tours for visitors living with memory loss, and other events that help to foster learning and creativity for school-aged children.
“Through their work, UMMA’s docents have directly connected hundreds of thousands of people with original works of art, bringing art to life,” noted Ruth Slavin, UMMA Deputy Director for Education. “In honoring their forty years of accomplishments, we also embrace this history as a springboard for the future.”
Above Photo: UMMA docents Dottie Farhat (left) and Lois Baru greet each other at the 40th anniversary celebration. For more photos, visit UMMA’s Flickr gallery.