The great museums of the twenty first century will pursue missions that create spaces of learning and build communities. Excellence and Equity charged museums with using all their resources toward these ends but the docent's role in these aims is often overlooked. This case study explores the value of the student and community docent program at the Wexner Center for the Arts, located on The Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio. Participant observation, autoethnography, and narrative interviews are used to asses the program's value to participants, the center, the university and the community.
A discussion of the administration of the docent program is provided. Topics include formation, goals, pedagogy, training format and content, and evaluation methods. The lived experience of participants in the docent program describes motivations, perceived usefulness of training program components, the alignment between staff and participant views of the docent's role, rewards associated with participation, and observations on how the docent program bridges the center and the university communities.
Findings suggest that when docents at the Wexner Center engage visitors in a dialogue about art, they build bridges to learning and create social capital. A description of the program's public value to stakeholders is followed by implications for the field and suggestions for future research.