“History is a Gallery of Pictures”: Art Museums and Preservice Teachers’ Social Studies Pedagogy

This study examines preservice teachers’ experiences with art museums, asking how teachers’ conceptualizations of art museums as spaces of counter-story knowledge impact their pedagogical and curricular practices when teaching social studies. After studying how one group of preservice history teachers engage and make sense of a particular exhibit and the collective museum, we found that personal and collective critical analysis of artworks within museum spaces can connect art pieces to counter-narrative teaching methods for the classroom. We also found, however, that both the history of Western art museums as spaces of whiteness and the social identities of the beholder of art pieces greatly influence to what degree such spaces are conceptualized into teaching goals for equitable, justice-oriented social studies instruction.