Student field trips to SMU's Meadows Museum are free

DALLAS (SMU) – SMU’s Meadows Museum is again providing free admission to students and supporting the cost of school field trip transportation to the museum. Despite tight school budgets, local schoolchildren will be introduced to an appreciation of art as they explore concepts ranging from the elements of art to the history of Spanish painting and sculpture by visiting the museum at no cost on school field trips, thanks to a renewed grant from the Fichtenbaum Charitable Trust, Bank of America, N.A., Co-Trustee.

This fall, students will enjoy “Spanish Light: Sorolla in American Collections,” an exhibit recognizing the centennial of the death of the celebrated Spanish painter, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. The exhibit will feature his characteristic subjects, such as the sun-bleached sails of Valencian fishing boats, children frolicking on the shoreline and lively garden scenes.

The grant supported nearly 3,500 K-12 students on field trip visits to the Meadows Museum last year, almost doubling the previous year’s number. The grant also supports admission costs for school chaperones and students who visit the museum on their own. Transit costs for qualifying schools are supported by an existing Meadows Museum fund.

New materials to support teachers before and after their field trips are now available thanks to the museum’s Teacher Advisory Committee. Resources include an interactive guidebook of the museum’s Sculpture Plaza for elementary students. In addition, hands-on artmaking projects will be introduced this year as optional add-ons to the museum’s exisiting tours: “Learning to Look,” “Faces of Spain,” and “Form of Things.”

School group tours are offered in both English and Spanish, and a number of accommodations are available to visitors with special needs. To book a school group tour of the Meadows Museum, visit meadowsmuseumdallas.org/groups-tours/ and complete a tour request form. Staff will answer questions at meadowsmuseumtours@smu.edu or 214-768-2740.

In addition to funding school visits to the museum, the grant also supports the Meadows Museum’s focus on expanding programs for families. Staffed in part by SMU students, these new programs – Connect & Create, Open Studio and Sensory Carts – join Children’s Drawing from the Masters and Family Days to bring new, exiciting opportunities for families to connect with and through art.

The Fichtenbaum Charitable Trust grant supports the University’s $1.5 billion campaign, SMU Ignited: Boldly Shaping Tomorrow, particularly the goal to enhance campus and community with programs and partnerships that enrich the quality of life here.

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMUʼs alumni, faculty and more than 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities, and the world. Building on its history of excellence, the University has launched SMU Ignited: Boldly Shaping Tomorrow – a multiyear $1.5 billion campaign to empower outstanding students, to enrich teaching and research, and to enhance our campus and community.

About the Meadows Museum

The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters.