About Philip Yenawine

In the late 1980’s, when Philip Yenawine was the Director of Education at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he was given a challenge. A major donor wanted to know if his investment in the museum’s educational programs effected change: did museum visitors grow in their understandings of modern art as result? Yenawine’s bid to answer that question led him to researcher Abigail Housen (Ed.D. Harvard Graduate School of Education) and together they dug deeply into the effectiveness of MOMA’s programs. To Yenawine’s dismay, no matter the considerable gifts of his staff, the teaching did not produce change. Housen’s research however explained why: before the facts and concepts MOMA’s talented lecturers shared would stick, visitors needed to further develop existing visual and cognitive skills.