NEW YORK- RMA is engaged in a dynamic and innovative series of collaborative educational programs with schools throughout the New York area. The Museum is bringing one of the world's most comprehensive collections of Himalayan art to young audiences, introducing students to the culture and history of this region while fostering literacy and enhancing visual thinking skills. RMA school programs engage the students in universal questions of the humanities. Cultural and individual identity, religion and myth, conflict and paradox are all explored within the art and in relation to the student's personal experience. An individual connection to the art: the ability to communicate easily with others: these are the equally important goals RMA has for the students it works with.

One of the tools RMA employs is The Tibetan Box--a wooden chest painted by schoolchildren from Katsel, Tibet, and filled by them with objects, both everyday and ceremonial, which they selected as best representing their culture. The box, inscribed "From the Tibetan students to their American friends," is used by Museum staff in schools and libraries as an alluring introduction to a very different place. RMA's more extended programs are based on the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) method, developed by the influential arts educator Philip Yenawine and cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen. VTS is a widely praised collection of techniques for conducting non-directive discussions of a sequence of carefully chosen artworks. VTS has been shown to improve critical reasoning and communication skills while stimulating students' appreciation and understanding of art.

RMA's past and current education programs include a series of talks by RMA and Columbia University scholars to students at Manhattan's Dwight School, after-school programs with New York's Red Cross Family Centers for children ages 6-10, and extended collaborations with The Teen Action Network, New York (involving the new Millennium High School and the Vanderbilt YMCA), Washington Irving High School's Art House, and ESL teachers and students at New York's Liberty High School.