For K–12 Educators
Reservations will open in Fall 2025 for scheduling K–12 classes and programs in Spring 2026. If you have questions, please contact the senior gallery educator at puamtour@princeton.edu.
The Museum’s K–12 programs are grounded in the core tenets of our audience-centered approach: close looking, active engagement, and inquiry-based discovery. Drawing from the more than 117,000 objects in the Museum’s collections, our group programs explore global art from antiquity to the present.
On-Campus Experiences
Plan a visit to explore the Museum’s new galleries, art on campus, Art@Bainbridge, activities in the Creativity Labs, or a combination of experiences.
The Museum works with individual K–12 educators to tailor programs that meet teaching needs and connect with classroom curriculum through student-driven discussions and activities.
Let us know you are planning a visit. K–12 groups must make a reservation at least four weeks in advance for guided, self-guided, and Creativity Lab visits. Guided tours are approximately 1 hour. Group capacity is 100 students. Fees are waived for school groups during the academic year.
Guided Group Tours
Essential Questions: How can understanding, or “reading,” works of art deepen our understanding of ourselves, our community, and the world around us?
How can we practice literacy skills using works of art?
Using the inquiry method and close observation, students explore a work of art and “decode” its meaning to make art-to-self connections and art-to-world connections. Then, students work in small groups to apply the same skills of focused looking, critical thinking, and analysis to complete activities designed to further explore these connections.
Age Groups: Elementary, Middle, and High School
Through inquiry-based close looking and student-driven discussions, students explore the essential question, How can the arts express and influence culture?
Customize a tour to align with your curriculum goals. Select from two to four areas of the collections to explore during your visit:
- African Art
- American Art
- Ancient Mediterranean Art
- Art of the Ancient Americas
- Asian Art
- European Art
- Native North American Art
Age groups: elementary, middle, and high school
Exploring the essential question, How am I connected to the past?, students examine and discuss depictions of communities across time, geography, and culture.
Age group: elementary school
Princeton University is home to one of the country’s most extraordinary collections of twentieth- and twenty-first-century public sculpture, located throughout campus. Schedule a guided walking tour of the campus collections and see a variety of works by modern and contemporary sculptors, from Henry Moore to Maya Lin. Learn about materials and techniques and explore elements of design and balance.
Choose from two campus neighborhoods to tour: Main Campus or Residential Colleges. All tour routes are stair-free.
Groups are welcome to explore campus art on their own. Resources about the collections and artists, including audio descriptions and commentary, are available online at Campus Art Princeton.
Age groups: elementary, middle, and high school
Art@Bainbridge is a gallery project of the Museum housed in the carefully restored historical Bainbridge House in downtown Princeton. Scheduled visits to Art@Bainbridge include an introduction to the space and the current exhibition and may include a facilitated group activity.
As Art@Bainbridge is intimate in scale, this experience is available for groups of 8 to 15. Visit length varies.
Age groups: middle and high school
Learn more about Art@Bainbridge and the current exhibition on view.
Creativity Labs
Schedule a Creativity Lab visit for a hands-on activity rooted in reflection, discovery, and play. Customized to meet your group’s interests and curriculum goals, activities explore a variety of themes, materials and mediums, art-making processes, and modes of expression. Consider pairing your guided or self-guided gallery visit with a Creativity Lab activity to deepen engagement and build connections.
There are two Creativity Labs. Each Lab can accommodate up to 24 students. Activities are 30 to 60 minutes.
Group visits to the Creativity Labs must be scheduled at least four weeks in advance. Fees are waived for school groups during the academic year.
Creativity Lab activities are available for pairing with the following K–12 gallery tours:
- Art of Comprehension
- Expressing Culture
- Exploring Communities
To discuss stand alone Creativity Lab K–12 group programs, please contact the tour office at puamtour@princeton.edu.
In-School and Virtual Programs
Bring the Museum’s collections to your classroom through student-driven, inquiry-based activities. A Museum docent will facilitate a series of activities that invite students to look closely at works of art, posing an essential question related to New Jersey’s core curriculum standards. Students will work collaboratively, using critical thinking skills to reflect, analyze, and make connections.
Programs are 45 to 90 minutes in duration and can be planned with multiple classes and tailored to your schedule.
In-school programs are available Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., with 2 p.m. being the latest program start time; dates should be reserved at least one month in advance. Schools must be within a 20-mile radius of Princeton University.
Virtual programs are available Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., with 2 p.m. being the latest program start time; dates should be reserved at least four weeks in advance. Schools are responsible for providing a Zoom link for the program.
In-School and Virtual Programs
Essential Questions: How can understanding, or “reading,” works of art deepen our understanding of ourselves, our community, and the world around us?
How can we practice literacy skills using works of art?
Using the inquiry method and close observation, students explore a work of art and “decode” its meaning to make art-to-self connections and art-to-world connections. Then, students work in small groups to apply the same skills of focused looking, critical thinking, and analysis to complete activities designed to further explore these connections.
Age groups: elementary, middle, and high school
Exploring the essential question, How am I connected to the past?, students examine works of art and explore depictions of families across time, geography, and culture. Program includes a hands-on art-making component that encourages students to make connections between families of today and families of the past.
Age group: elementary school
Exploring the essential question, How am I connected to the past?, students examine works of art and explore depictions of communities across time, geography, and culture. Program includes a hands-on art-making component that encourages students to make connections between communities of today and communities of the past.
Age group: elementary school
During an inquiry-based close-looking activity, students “decode” a work of art and discover how it expresses something about the culture in which it was created. Building on this model, students work in small groups to complete related activities designed to help them explore the essential question, How can the arts express and influence culture? Working collaboratively, students are challenged to think critically about what they see and to make connections between art and culture. The program can be tailored to classroom curriculum and can connect across disciplines.
Themes: African, American, Ancient Mediterranean, Asian, European, Mesoamerican, Multicultural (each with image)
Age groups: middle and high school
This hands-on program challenges students to use critical-thinking skills and to work collaboratively to present a collection of objects that explore a common theme. To begin, Museum docents facilitate a few “quick-fire” activities to help students practice “reading” a work of art, discuss how objects can be placed in conversation with one another, and complete a short thematic writing exercise. Then, working in small groups, students reflect on the theme, select objects, and prepare a brief curatorial statement supporting their choices.
Age group: high school
Fees are waived for school groups during the academic year. The Museum provides art-making materials for in-school programs. Schools are responsible for art-making supplies for virtual programs. To schedule an in-school or virtual program, email the tour office puamtour@princeton.edu.
Reservations will open in Fall 2025 for scheduling K–12 programs in Spring 2026.