Museum As Megaphone
VIRTUAL Fifth Grade Art Experience (FGAE)
Museum as Megaphone is Missoula Art Museum's distance-learning platform. It gives students and teachers access to contemporary art exhibitions on view at MAM, and a chance to interact directly with artists and arts educators. Students and teachers from schools all over the state can participate in real-time, interactive tours in the MAM galleries. MAM’s arts educators lead students on an inquiry-based tour to engage and promote self-discovery through dialogue and discussion. Each course is self-paced and is not timed. The steps can be completed as a class or assigned as independent work. We have created these programs to mirror the experience of coming into the museum galleries as closely as possible. This includes video tours, art-making instructions for projects, resource lists, and more! Museum as Megaphone was created in partnership with Inspired Classroom.
All of the courses meet the Montana state standards in visual art, Social Studies, and English/Language Arts. Additionally, most of the courses also meet the Montana Indian Education for All (IEFA) Essential Understandings standards.
Contemporary art can challenge students to think deeply about issues that impact their community, explore artists’ creative processes and techniques, flip their perspectives, and widen their worldview. Museum as Megaphone amplifies MAM’s reach to share art and ideas with our rural and Tribal communities state-wide and it amplifies student voices as they become part of the conversation on contemporary art.
More Information
The Missoula Art Museum’s VIRTUAL Fifth Grade Art Experience (FGAE), Museum as Megaphone, includes a LIVE DAY segment with exhibiting Artist, STELLA NALL, and a virtual curriculum for teachers featuring artists and exhibitions that are currently on display at MAM. This is entirely FREE for you and your students. This is an excellent opportunity to connect your fifth-grade classes with a professional artist for conversation and artmaking while meeting MT and National core standards in Visual Arts, Social Studies, English Language Arts, and Indian Education for All. LIVE DAY segments with STELLA NALL are held during the week of December 8-12, 2025. These are 45-minute virtual events held on ZOOM directly from your 5th grade classroom. Students and teachers from schools all over the state can participate in real-time, interactive tours and hand-on artmaking with an exhibiting artist—all live from MAM and Stella Nall’s studio.
The VIRTUAL CURRICULUM can be accessed in your own time and implemented to prepare students in advance of the LIVE DAY. The Virtual Curriculum for Teachers is Free & Available Now, and it takes just 1 hour! It features 6 exhibiting artists at MAM.
REGISTRATION OPEN NOW! First come, first served for live days! (For more information and FAQ about “live days,” see below). Spaces fill quickly! Register for your LIVE DAY or VIRTUAL CURRICULUM using links below. We must limit each LIVE DAY session to a maximum of THREE 5th-grade classes at your school. Please register for additional slots if there are more than THREE classrooms participating from your school.
REGISTRATION FOR THE VIRTUAL CURRICULUM:
Already have an Inspired Classroom account, click here: https://icchallenge.org/login
Use the join code: BNX2WGOI
New to Inspired Classroom? Click here: https://icchallenge.org/teachers/join_challenge/W7CYIH69
Museum as Megaphone
VIRTUAL FGAE + LIVE DAY with artist Stella Nall
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE VIRTUAL LIVE DAY WITH STELLA NALL ON CALENDLY
Missoula Art Museum’s VIRTUAL Fifth Grade Art Experience (FGAE), Museum as Megaphone, includes a LIVE DAY segment that focuses on the exhibiting contemporary artist, Stella Nall. This is entirely free for you and your students. This is an excellent opportunity to connect your fifth-grade classes with a professional artist for conversation and artmaking while meeting MT and National core standards in Visual Arts, Social Studies, English Language Arts, and Indian Education for All. Students and teachers from schools all over the state can participate in real-time, interactive tours and hands-on artmaking—all live from MAM galleries.
Stella Nall, (Apsáalooke descendant) whose Crow Name is Bisháakinnesh (Rode Buffalo), is a multimedia artist, poet, and musician. She earned her BFA in Printmaking, BA in Psychology, with a minor in Art History and Criticism at the University of Montana in 2020.
Stella Nall combines printmaking, painting, beadwork, and other media with a distinctive visual language that is built on delicate line and mark-making, uncomplicated formal compositions, and a sophisticated use of saturated colors. Central to many of Nall’s images are animals, both wild and domestic, which represent symbols in her narrative artworks. The convergence of formal elements with unpretentious, relatable imagery makes Nall’s work welcoming and accessible. Her imagery is at once playful and profound, and speaks to the shared human experiences of identity, love, grief, and belonging.
More Information about Live Days:
What are "Live Days"?
Live days are timeslots for your students to participate in a livestream with The Missoula Art Museum. This is a rare opportunity for your students to talk to a professional artist, and be able to ask questions before they’re taken through an engaging drawing activity! This is entirely free and all you need to participate is a webcam and an Internet connection. Available timeslots are listed above.
Do I need to prepare my students for the Live Day?
• To prepare for the Live Day, your students should prepare some questions for the artist. You could even assign this for homework!
• MAM designed a short, FREE virtual curriculum that mimics the full IN-PERSON FGAE. It’s self-paced and includes videos of artists, artwork, and exhibitions, as well as reflective writing and art-making prompts. The contemporary artists featured and currently on display at MAM are: Stella Nall, JM Cooper, Jennifer Leutzinger, Delia Touché, and Brittney Denham Whisonant. This program meets state standards in social studies, visual arts, language arts, and Indian Education for All (IEFA). Your class can work through the steps in this Virtual Curriculum (1 hour total), before or after the Live Day, at your own pace. TO REGISTER for this FREE VIRTUAL CURRICULUM, see links above.
What exactly will happen on the Live Day?
The Missoula Art Museum’s VIRTUAL Fifth Grade Art Experience (FGAE), Museum as Megaphone, includes a LIVE DAY segment with exhibiting Artist, STELLA NALL, and a virtual curriculum for teachers featuring artists and exhibitions that are currently on display at MAM. This is entirely FREE for you and your students. This is an excellent opportunity to connect your fifth-grade classes with a professional artist for conversation and artmaking while meeting MT and National core standards in Visual Arts, Social Studies, English Language Arts, and Indian Education for All. LIVE DAY segments with STELLA NALL are held during the week of December 8-12, 2025. These are 45-minute virtual events held on ZOOM directly from your 5th grade classroom. Students and teachers from schools all over the state can participate in real-time, interactive tours and hand-on artmaking with an exhibiting artist—all live from MAM and Stella Nall’s studio.
• Plan to be in a room with a computer with a camera and microphone. If you have more than one class jumping on, everyone can zoom in from their classroom. Kids can zoom in from home too!
• Have your classes arrive with questions for and about the artist in advance (5 per class).
• Have the students ready to speak their question into the mic and be sure to say their name.
• The students will be lead through a drawing activity which will take about 15 minutes, and we will invite the students to bring their art up to the camera to share. Please have pencils, 2 pieces of white paper, 1 piece of contrast paper (examples: colored construction paper, newspaper, magazine paper), scissors, and glue sticks or glue ready for each student.
• We will ask students to write a reflection - just a sentence about what they will remember and ask that you email us those.
• We will also be emailing out a short poll to record your feedback. This has been invaluable in improving our offering and making it work for everyone. It also helps us get funding so that we can offer this program to you and your students for FREE. Thank you in advance for doing this.
I'm confused or stuck!
If you need assistance, email our Curator of Education, Kay Grissom-Kiely: kay@missoulaartmuseum.org.
