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Rika Burnham

Lecturer; Head of Education, Frick Collection in New York

A leading theorist and practitioner of art museum gallery teaching, Rika Burnham serves as 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. Previously, she was a museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. An influential author in her field, her publications include several essays on museum education (National Gallery of Australia, 2015; The Barnes Foundation, 2015; and SITE Santa Fe, 2015) and a catalogue essay in Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009). Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Getty, 2011), which she coauthored with Elliott Kai-Kee, won a PROSE Award for best title in education from the Association of American Publishers. Burnham was awarded the degree of Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014.

She teaches "The Literature of Art."

Education

  • B.A., Harvard University

Publications

  • Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Getty, 2011), co-authored with Elliott Kai-Kee