About this session

Sydney Skelton Simon, the Bradley Associate Curator of Academic Affairs, and Molleen Theodore, the Jane and Gerald Katcher Curator of Programs, will discuss the Gallery Guide program, which trains undergraduates to lead conversational and interactive tours for the visiting public. Sydney and Molleen will lead participants in inquiry-based activities core to Gallery Guide training and the museum’s broader pedagogical approach to teaching and programming with the collection.

Sydney Skelton Simon and Molleen Theodore co-authored the Gallery Guide Guide, which documents the core values and operational nuts and bolts of this nationally renowned program.

Session Objectives

• Introduce participants to the Gallery Guide program and broader student engagement opportunities
• Experience inquiry-based methodologies with Gallery educators

Speakers

Speaker

Sydney Skelton Simon

Bradley Associate Curator of Academic Affairs
Yale University Art Gallery

Sydney Skelton Simon is the Bradley Associate Curator of Academic Affairs at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she oversees university-level outreach and teaching programs. In a typical academic year, the Gallery welcomes hundreds of university courses from a wide range of fields and disciplines for one or more class visits. Sydney works with faculty to draw out subject-matter connections with the content they are teaching in class, develop and hone critical skills and thinking dispositions, expose students to an important campus resource, and build community among students. From 2018-2023, she also oversaw the yearlong training of undergraduate Gallery Guides developing thematic Highlights Tours for general visitors. Sydney received her B.A. from Yale University in History of Art and her Ph.D. from Stanford University, specializing in post-World War II American art and design.

Speaker

Molleen Theodore

Jane and Gerald Katcher Curator of Programs
Yale University Art Gallery

Molleen Theodore is the Jane and Gerald Katcher Curator of Programs at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she develops and oversees public programs. She collaborates across the museum, the university, and the community to forge partnerships and design programs that foster audience engagement with the museum and its collection. From 2020-2023, Molleen co-led the undergraduate Gallery Guide program, focusing on the Guides’ continued training and public-program offerings. As the Gallery’s Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Fellow from 2011-2013, she supervised students in curating exhibitions, including Many Things Placed Here and There: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery and Jazz Lives: The Photographs of Lee Friedlander and Milt Hinton. Molleen holds a Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center with a focus on art of the 1960s and 1970s. She has served as an education lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.