Education & Public Programs at the MV Museum spent 2022 broadening its reach to the Island community, and the Morgan Learning Center was critical to the success of our myriad programs.

Without our classroom, we would be hindered in our ability to host school field trips and provide hands-on learning to museum visitors. In addition to welcoming 814 students from kindergarten through college to the museum as part of our Museum Education program, our youth-centered public offerings expanded significantly and provided fun, creative learning opportunities to nearly 300 additional visitors. One of our biggest successes was a new museum storytime program that reached Islanders who had not necessarily considered the museum a resource for families with young children.

Island schools and students in grades K-8 form the bulk of our audience in Museum Education, but we continue to see incremental success in reaching preschool, high school, and college audiences. We are delighted to be building relationships with the Vineyard’s preschools and Head Start program. At the other end of the age spectrum, students from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s Project Vine again utilized our resources for their annual Lore Night research-and-creative writing assignment and subsequent performance, held at the museum. Our research librarian, Dr. A. Bowdoin Van Riper, has offered project support and assistance to six college students doing in-depth research on Vineyard subjects; he has also worked closely with students in the Deaf Studies program at Clemson University, who visited this summer.