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Museums are essential components of the educational and cultural landscape of their communities. Whether their focus is on the arts, history or science, they are storytellers capable of creating extraordinary moments and long-lasting impact. They are gateways to inspiration and understanding — places to expand perspectives, express oneself, reduce barriers, belong with peers and cultivate appreciation for one another and the broader world. It is a responsibility to be embraced and celebrated, with many individual institutions achieving great success and considerable impact.
While partnerships among organizations exist, they can often — intentionally or not —fall into the quagmire of partnering with like institutions or be positioned as secondary to an organization’s goals. But interdisciplinary projects across organizations can attract new audiences, foster innovation, encourage systems-based thinking and bring relevancy and inclusion to the museum.
With its rich diversity of institutions — both in scale and focus — San Antonio is an ideal community for organizational collaboration, especially across the museum sector.
Following the COVID pandemic and the return of in-person schooling, Museo Institute was launched for the 2021-2022 school year. Developed collaboratively by the education teams at The DoSeum, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio Zoo and Witte Museum, Museo Institute is an immersive, year-long professional development opportunity for the area’s educators.
The program consists of an initial “Museum-Go-Round” session, where enrolled educators participate in workshops at each institution. Following the completion of these sessions, educators are divided into smaller sub-cohorts and paired with an institution related to their classroom or homeschool curriculum. Here, they develop instructional materials for their classroom that pull from the resources and expertise of their host institution.
Knowledge sharing, collaboration, reflection and creativity inspired by each of our cultural organization’s educational offerings are core to the program. Each participating educator — selected through a competitive application process — may earn up to 70 Continuing Professional Education credits. Now entering its third year, participating institutions now also include the San Antonio Botanical Garden and the Alamo.
The foundation for this type of collaboration was set by the long-beloved Tres Museos program, hosted by the McNay, San Antonio Museum of Art and the Witte. This program provided a day of teacher professional development at three museums during the first weeks of teacher in-service.
In 2020, The DoSeum was invited and engaged in the process of joining this program. Rebranded to Mas Museos, the program has run successfully in this expanded format every year since 2021, with teachers visiting each museum on a day in July — just before the start of the school year — to celebrate, enjoy fellowship and learn about the educational offerings of each museum. Enrollment in both Mas Museos and Museo Institute has been increasing steadily over the past two years as has investment from local school systems — including independent school districts, charter and private schools, and the citywide Head Start early childhood program.
A further example of collaboration among the city’s cultural entities is this year’s Celebración Celestial. Organized by a cohort of partners within the Alamo STEM Ecosystem, which includes The DoSeum, Witte Museum, UTSA, Texas Parks & Wildlife, Southwest Research Institute, Scobee Education Center, San Antonio Public Library, COSA Parks & Recreation, and more, Celebración Celestial is a coordinated set of programs centered on the October 2023 and April 2024 eclipses.
To kick off the celebration, an Educator Appreciation Night was held at The DoSeum on Sept. 9. Celebrating educators from classroom, museum and home-school settings, the program featured bites and beverages, classroom-ready activities presented by the partners’ education and research teams and a special keynote address by UTSA’s Angela Speck — all followed by dessert under the stars. Offered free to any and all educators, registration opened on Monday, Aug. 7, and reached capacity within 48 hours.
While traditional science fairs often rewarded “first places” or “best-in-shows,” that style of thinking is counter to the process that is science. Science is a community, not a competition. And we posit that so are the cultural organizations that support their village, town or city. Combining the strengths of each organization in a coordinated effort to best serve their community is perhaps a too-rare situation across the country. But here in San Antonio, we are proud to proclaim and share our aligned visions and goals to serve the city’s families as best we can.
For more information on Museo Institute and Celebración Celestial, please visit thedoseum.org/museo-institute and sanantonioeclipse.org.
