The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) has announced the return of its highly successful free busing program for the entire 2025-26 school year, as students across the city returned to classrooms this week. The museum's education programming is shifting back into full school mode at its learning and engagement center, which opened last year to serve Philadelphia's diverse student population.
The free busing initiative, originally launched in November of last year, exceeded all expectations during its inaugural run. The program was designed to support educational sessions that began with tours and guided discussions of an exhibition featuring Black and African diasporic artists on the museum's typically closed weekdays. Due to overwhelming popularity, the program expanded to include the museum's general collections and additional days throughout the remainder of the school year.
By the program's end, the museum had welcomed 36 buses carrying 443 students—12 more than the museum's own internal forecasts had projected. "How can we go back to charging for buses, because of the demand that we've seen," joked Audrey Hudson, the PMA's deputy director for learning and engagement, during the program's early stages. The museum spent the summer months streamlining the booking system to make it more seamless for educators to schedule trips, with the ambitious goal of welcoming even more students this academic year.
While the current temporary space successfully accommodates visiting students, the museum's long-term vision is far more expansive. Plans call for a comprehensive 20,000-square-foot learning and engagement center that will occupy the entire north wing of the museum. This ambitious project is designed to dramatically expand the PMA's capacity to serve learners of all ages and backgrounds from around the world.
"We want to outfit it so that it is the living room of the city, so that it serves Philadelphians, but also the world," Hudson explained. The physical transformation is still in its planning stages, with multiyear renovations scheduled to begin in fall 2026. However, the exact timeline and opening date for the completed center have not yet been finalized.
Currently, the museum operates what it calls "the hub"—a converted retail space within the north wing that now functions as a multipurpose classroom, lunch hall, and gallery for displaying student artwork. This temporary setup serves as the foundation for the museum's educational programming while plans for the larger renovation take shape.
The core mission of the PMA's education programming focuses on cultivating lifelong learners—young people who will return to the museum as adults with their own families and develop a lasting appreciation for art shows and museums in general. To achieve this goal, the teaching approach centers around the students themselves, presenting artworks in relevant ways that resonate with their lived experiences and interests.
Hudson emphasized that this student-centered approach is accomplished through interactive questioning, with a staff of six dedicated educators encouraging students to examine artwork closely and even try their hand at drawing. "The average person spends 19 seconds in front of an artwork," Hudson noted. The program aims to extend that engagement to one or two minutes of focused observation and discussion.
"It's really giving them the cultural capacity to actually enter into a space that may not have always been welcoming," she explained. "We're giving them the confidence to actually speak about a work of art or know how to come into a museum and really just own the space like it's theirs—because it is."
Research supports the museum's educational approach. A study published in the American Psychological Association's Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts journal recommended that educators make art classes more accessible to middle school students, particularly targeting practices that actively engage students who might be less likely to take art classes. The study identified this age range as a pivotal point in students' long-term relationship with the arts, noting that exposure to arts electives in middle school correlated with significantly higher GPAs, improved math and reading scores, and decreased odds of school suspension.
While art students represent the most obvious target audience for the PMA's programming, Hudson stressed that the center aims to draw in learners from all academic disciplines and backgrounds. The museum is developing a comprehensive STEAM education program—one that integrates arts learning into the traditional science, technology, engineering, and mathematics framework of STEM education. The artwork also provides natural connections to history and geography instruction, creating interdisciplinary learning opportunities.
The program's reach extends beyond traditional art classes. December's round of tours included students from the Philadelphia Military Academy, demonstrating the museum's commitment to serving diverse educational communities throughout the city.
To ensure continuous improvement, the museum has established a comprehensive feedback system based on visitor experiences. Teachers complete exit surveys that provide valuable insights into student engagement and curriculum enhancement opportunities. "I always think of it as, 'How can we better serve you? You are our public, you're our audience. So, what are we doing [well], what are we not doing that we could be doing better,'" Hudson said of the survey process. She noted that the decision to have students try drawing themselves during guided tours came directly from such feedback.
The museum also demonstrates its commitment to educators through special events like the Educators Appreciation Day held last September, which highlighted the upcoming year's education programming. This year's event is scheduled for Saturday, September 13, with a particular focus on upcoming exhibitions and resources related to the approaching 250th anniversary of the United States.
One of the program's primary challenges involves overcoming traditional barriers that make museums intimidating spaces for young visitors. For many kids, museums can feel like stuffy places filled with unrelatable artwork and strict rules about not touching anything or standing too close to displays. The PMA's educational efforts specifically target these barriers by giving students from various backgrounds and interests a genuine sense of ownership in the space, thereby reducing feelings of restriction or discomfort.
"We're thinking about how people come in, the access points, but then when they come in, hopefully they come back," Hudson explained. "It's almost like you learn how to be in a museum. It's not natural, not to touch anything." The museum staff accomplishes this by truly seeing each student as an individual, honoring their lived experiences, meeting them wherever they are in their educational journey, and then building upon the artwork they experience together.
"It's not that we expect everyone to be an artist—although everyone is an artist, in their own way—but you're just looking and observing," Hudson concluded. "So learning to observe, learning to look closely, and learning to put that paper to pencil, if you will." Through this comprehensive approach, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is working to transform itself from an intimidating cultural institution into an accessible community resource that truly serves as the living room of the city.
