UNL museums retain high numbers through recession

The State Museum in Morrill Hall and the Sheldon Museum of Art provide tens of thousands of kids with out-of-classroom educational experiences every year.

The two institutions have led field trips for elementary school children and adults despite high gas prices and shrinking school budgets. Officials at both museums said visits remain steady and visitors remain enthusiastic.

Both museums have contracts with Lincoln Public Schools to enhance curriculum for students in third through sixth grade. That alone provides the Sheldon, located on 12 and R streets, with 22,000 eyes and ears a year, said Karen Janovy, curator of education there. Fourth graders learn from volunteers what art is, fifth graders learn about 2D art and sixth graders tour the 30-piece outdoor sculpture garden and discuss 3D space.

"All of our tours are free, and that's really great about the university art museum," she said.
This makes the educational experience provided by Sheldon quite the steal.

The Sheldon's integration of art into curriculum is a model program throughout the nation, she said.

"We teach them the value of visual arts in their everyday world and the kind of impact the arts have on life," Janovy said. "The value of art permeates everything they do in society."

Still, Janovy said visits have been on a slight decline since the heyday in 1995-1996, when well over 14,000 visitors received led tours.

She attributed this to gas prices.

"It happened in the past few years that there was a significant increase in gasoline. Prices were exorbitant," she said. "School budgets have been cut throughout the Great Plains and people were tightening their belts."

She said the Sheldon may suffer more next year as school budgets are cut.

It costs $4 per kid to see the dinosaurs at the State Museum in Morrill Hall. For that amount, children are led through the state's geologic history, see the mammoth fossils or learn about wetlands, rocks and native populations.

The State Museum's 30-year-old contract with LPS means all third and fifth graders visit the museum. And the presentations are in conjunction with what the students are learning in class.

Field trips are important places of learning and interaction for students, said Kathy French, education coordinator for the State Museum.

"The programming is inquiry-based and hands-on, but is standard-based," she said. "There's no comparison. You can talk all you want, but to stand and look at things – we have an experience in the museum unlike anything else."

She said the informal setting of interactive learning gives kids who have trouble focusing in the classroom greater freedom to look up close and fiddle around with remnants of state history.

French said numbers are up a little bit this year.

"It's not tremendous: 10 percent this spring," she said. "There are a lot of buses (outside Morrill Hall), which is great."

She said many schools have a tradition of discovering Nebraska's history at the State Museum.

"I think people really do enjoy coming here. A lot of schools have been coming here for a long time. I've been here 15 years, and it's the same schools year after year," she said.

Transportation hurdles also affected the State Museum. Parents used to be able to drive classrooms in cars and minivans before the liability became too great. And schools may be cutting access to buses.

"We're sure glad (schools are) still coming," she said. "We have a pretty dedicated base of teachers who make it a point to get here."

Both Janovy and French wanted University of Nebraska-Lincoln students to know the museums are free to them, although they are required to show an NCard to enter the State Museum.

kiahhaslett@dailynebraskan.com