Museum education has been an integral function of art museums in America since their inception. Indeed, our most venerable institutions call attention to the importance of education in their founding charters. Yet despite this responsibility, there remain significant unresolved questions about how best to organize and conduct the enterprise of museum education. A spectrum of opinion exists for every important issue. Whose responsibility is it in the art museum to conceive and carry out an educational program? What are the best ways to help audiences have meaningful encounters with works of art? How can we find out what different viewers need to enhance their viewing experiences? What theories and research may be cited to provide a solid foundation upon which to design educational services? These and similar questions give the field of museum education a problematical character. It makes the field, for those in the museum who choose to work with it, an uncertain profession.

On one hand, in recent years museum education has emerged as a field of interest and study in its own right. Indications of such standing include the milestone 1978 study, The Art Museum as Educator, edited by Barbara Newsom and Adele Silver; the establishment of special interest sections for museum educators in the American Association of Museums and in the National Art Education Association; and the dedication of significant attention to museum education in the report Museums for a New Century (1985) sponsored by the American Association of Museums. On the other hand, there are signs that suggest a field more in the process of being born than ripening into a maturity; scant attention to museum education as a professional field of study in the nation's universities; a peripatetic literature, the paucity of well-established journals, handbooks, or even a primary test; and a widespread perception that museum education lacks a map of its terrain and may not even be certain of its destination.