Vasundhara Prabhu

Vasundhara "Vas" Prabhu is the Director of Education at the Farnsworth Art Museum located in Rockland, Maine. She has over 42 years of experience in museum education where she has worked to increase diversity within the field and has been nationally recognized for her pioneering work in education programs particularly family guides and in exhibition interpretation and education oriented spaces within the museum viewing experience.

Early life and education Prabhu was born and raised in post-colonial India, where she was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's Socratic teaching philosophy that every classroom is a learning community and the teacher is the facilitator of knowledge. Prabhu moved and traveled all over the world as a child, where she would visit museums to learn about the different cities where she lived to find out each city’s prominent families, history and artistic values.

She graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Psychology and later attended Bank Street College of Education’s Museum Leadership Program.

Career Prabhu began her work initially as a part-time staff at Cornell University’s H.F. Johnson Museum of Art. During her time there, she was invited to attend a National Art Education Association conference in 1976, where she and other fellow museum educators met and originated the profession’s official name of art museum educators. From there, Prabhu worked at the Boston Children's Museum from 1984-1987 with Michael Spock, Elaine Gurian and Leslie Bedford organizing cultural festivals and artistic programs, which combined her interests in museums and cultural anthropology. She helped to oversee the exhibitions plus education concept at PEM, which is still being implemented.

From 2006-2010, Prabhu worked as the Deputy Director for Education & Interpretation at the San Diego Museum of Art, then was an independent museum educator until she moved to work at the Farnsworth Art Museum.

Awards and articles

NAEA Museum Education Division Regional Award (1984) Guip, David, Lynda Lowe, Vas Prabhu and Judith Sloane Blocker. “Instructional Resources: Religious Art.” Art Education, vol. 40, no. 5, 1987 Prabhu, Vas. “Instructional Resources: Contemporary Art: Familiar Objects in New Contexts.” Art Education, vol. 43, no. 4, 1990 NAEA Educator of the Year Award (1996) Prabhu, Vas, Ian Roper and Nigel Van Zwanenberg. “(ONLY) JUST-IN-TIME: JAPANISATION AND THE 'NON-LEARNING' FIRM.” Work, Employment & Society, vol. 11, no. 1, 1997 EdCom Award for Excellence in Practice (2002) Top Ten Child Friendly Art Museums Award: Child Magazine : Peabody Essex Museum CAEA and CAAE awards: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco