The Southeast Museum of Photography is committed to achieving the highest standards of visual literacy, integrating the collections more thoroughly into the college curriculum, and fostering interdisciplinary connections. To this end, the museum supplements and supports classroom and one-on-one interactions between faculty and students in a wide range of departments to develop programs that enhance students’ educational experience through the study of original objects.
Enhance Your Classes with SMP
With more than 4,000 photographs and 1,500 photographic materials the Southeast Museum of Photography offers faculty opportunities to help their students experience art, history, and culture, in sometimes unexpected ways. We offer class tours, assignment collaboration, and up-close engagements with art, valuable to every discipline and course of study.
The academic museum is so much more than a depository for local culture, or a destination for school field trips. The Southeast Museum of Photography enhances the education of Daytona State College students. When museum visitors are actively engaged in exhibition spaces or programming events, they are developing two sets of skills:
Visual Literacy
SMP firmly believes that visual literacy is a critical and often overlooked component in the education of budding professionals. Museum engagements provide students with this valuable skill set they can apply to their career path. Becoming more visually literate makes one more observant, perceptive, and allows for a better understanding of spatial awareness. People equipped with these qualities can be better suited for careers as technicians, mechanics, or medical professionals.
Florida State University College of Medicine students take a tour of the Shiny Ghost exhibition by Rachel Cox. Shiny Ghost explores themes of identity, connection, and memory in the face of neurodegenerative disease, a struggle faced by Cox’s grandmother and documented via Cox’s photography.
Critical Thinking
The other skill set exercised through museum engagement is critical thinking. While a passive museum experience may provide the visitor with the pleasure of viewing art images, an active museum engagement encourages the viewer to interact with the images, to think through the situation, subject matter, and composition. When engaged with museum objects, this visitor relies on their knowledge of other fields to create connections, or pushes back through questions and criticisms. Active museum engagement provides teaching and learning opportunities that correspond to all fields of study, and help to shape a student’s understanding of their field and themselves.
Daytona State College Photography students examine historical photographs intently, including Daguerrotypes and ambrotypes from the earliest days of photography, accompanied by Professor Steven Benson in the Museum library.
Three ways to shape engagements
Self-Guided Programming These engagements enable the students to explore current exhibitions on their own terms, in their own time. Museum staff can help to create materials that bridge exhibitions and topics from your class; students bring these prompts to the museum and complete the assignment using the resources of the museum.
Tours and Presentations Guided tours and presentations by SMP staff can be organized to connect with your classroom objectives in virtually any discipline. Docent tours on general or specific topics can be arranged for groups of 10 or more. These engagements go beyond the gallery space, to include objects or entire portfolios from the collection
Experiential Learning Open your students up to the experience of studying objects first hand. Instructors may select works from the Southeast Museum of Photography’s extensive permanent collection for use by individuals and small groups in the museum’s object study room. This opportunity is open to all disciplines and allows for the direct examination of art to encourage understanding of diverse cultures, historical periods and materials.