Rika Burnham

Rika Burnham is a museum educator, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

After dancing and choreographing in downtown New York for over a decade, Burnham became a museum educator, theorist, and practitioner of art museum gallery teaching. She has served as head of education at the Frick Collection, museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and project director for TIME/Teaching Institute in Museum Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently a lecturer at Columbia University, Burnham’s publications include Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Getty, 2011, with Elliott Kai-Kee), and catalogue and chapter essays that have appeared under the aegis of the Metropolitan Museum, National Gallery of Australia, Barnes Foundation, and SITE Santa Fe, as well as in numerous academic journals. Burnham was appointed a Getty Research Institute Museum Scholar in 2018 and an Attingham Trust Scholar at the Royal Collection Studies Programme, London, in 2006. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from Harvard College and was awarded the degree of Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014.