Book excerpt: This special issue of Museum Studies explores the broad history and practice of art education at the Art Institute, charting the museum's past, present, and future vision of what museum education can be and do. Drawing from a rich trove of archival, oral, and photographic resources, authors offer a lively account of museum education as an evolving profession, an outlet for aesthetic and political programs, and a crucial element of the Art Institute's public mission from the moment of its founding in 1879. The project, sponsored by the Woman's Board of The Art Institute of Chicago to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary, also explores that group's signal commitment to education and volunteerism at the museum, which has ranged from creating suburban community associations to sponsoring a corps of volunteer docents, from establishing a pioneering children's museum to planning celebrations that open the Art Institute's doors to the widest possible public. A pathbreaking effort, this publication constitutes an important, unique contribution to the history of education in American cultural institutions.