Museums that work frequently with schools would usually have their own set of museum etiquette that teachers could go through with students prior to the visit. Before we bring our students to the museum, my colleagues and I had a recee session so that we could coordinate our movements and staggered our visits to specific artworks.
While technology affordances allow us to look at images up close with the click of a button or even vitual reality that arouses our stimulus, nothing beats looking at the actual thing. When we see the actual work, we see a lot more subtleties or self-corrected misjudgement. For instance, the classroom projection shows Mono Lisa (by Leonardo da Vinci) almost the size of the projection screen. In real life, it is just approximately one-fifth the size. Her translucent veil could easily be missed if not pointed out. Furthermore, the artist was so technically competent that the paint strokes are hardly visible.
The museum visit is quite fundamental at the primary level. However, frequent museum/gallery goers know that the experience is beside the work. If you visit an art exhibition on the opening night, you can learn something from the collectors, patrons, writers, curators or attend other talks available. You just need to be physically present. There are different kind of dialogues and questions when the contexts are different. You can interact with different people who are as interesting as the artworks shown.
