As the pandemic halted many museum activities earlier this year, MMFA Guides continued, through Zoom, their weekly onsite training and workshops for their nearly 200 active Guides. For the past few years the Guides have used a dialogical approach, or open-ended questions, to encourage visitors to interact with guides about the art. Research shows that we retain more information when we are actively involved in an activity.

The editorial team of docent to docent magazine meeting on Zoom to brainstorm content: Left to Right: Docents Carolyn Galbreath, Steve Luppino, Luanne Andreotti (editor-in-chief), Pam Reed, Marty Johnson, Randee MacDonald, Ruth Modric.

Luanne Andreotti, Docent, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Spring 2021)

The Birth Story

Fostering personal connection among our 210 active docents and 107 supporting docents was the goal of our digital magazine start-up. It was conceived at the start of the pandemic by me and an advisory team of former FAMSF Docent executive council chairs. Along with touring, we knew docents missed the social aspect of lunches in the cafes after lectures, in-person parties, and travel to other museums. A receptive docent executive counsel applauded our vision and allocated docent funds for a website developer. We collaborated with the indispensable designer, settling on templates, fonts, colors, and images. The format of docent to docent was set by early June 2020. As a magazine writer and editor with experience, I was charged with leading a full production crew of docents. I recruited a team of novice editors including three detail-oriented former attorneys, none of whom had previously been involved in publishing, not to mention online publications. In shifting gears seamlessly, these adaptable and resourceful colleagues have clearly demonstrated the FAMSF organizational mantra: Be Flexible.

Joe Romito, Docent, National Air and Space Museum (Spring 2021)

From the moment the pandemic led to the shutdown of all Smithsonian Institution facilities in March 2020, docents at the National Air and Space Museum began looking forward to the day when they could return to doing what they do best: talk with visitors about the museum’s tremendous collection of air and space artifacts, and tell the stories of the people and events associated with those artifacts. Thanks to innovative thinking and a lot of hard work by museum staff and the docents themselves, Air and Space docents were able to resume their docent duties in September with the initiation of the museum’s Virtual Volunteer Artifact Station Program.

Lee Rubinstein, Docent, J. Paul Getty Museum (Spring 2021)

If I had my life to do over again, I would do some things differently. Instead of minoring in Art History, I would have majored in it, and then I would have set my sights on curating as a career.

To satisfy my interest in curation I took a college class entitled Gallery Management. There were many interesting assignments; the class made a floor plan of the college’s art gallery, helped hang a guest artist’s show, as well as planned the student art show. The mid-term assignment was to design a mini-catalogue for an art show with selections of our choice focusing on any period of art. I immediately decided on the Dutch Golden Age and my show was entitled “Dutch Treat: Holland’s Golden Age of Painting and the Rise of the Middle Class.” I was in my comfort zone!