Rika Burnham, the Head of Education at the Frick Collection in New York and project director for Teaching Institute for Museum Educators/TIME at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has joined the faculty of the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine. She teaches The Literature of Art.
Burnham brings impressive experience as a museum educator, where she has also worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is an influential author in her field and her publications include essays on museum education, and a catalogue essay in Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009). She won a PROSE award (best title in education, Association of American Publishers) for Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Getty, 2011), coauthored with Elliott Kai-Kee.
In a feature on The MET's website, Burnham describes her approach to teaching through looking at great works of art. It was a student's observation of a subtle knife in a Pierre Bonnard painting that opened her eyes to the artist's dark undertones. According to Burnham, "teaching is all about finding meaning as a deep and affecting experience," and she will take that approach to the Narrative Medicine Program.
