What kinds of programming should an art museum's education department offer to the K-12 school community? How can educators best contribute to students' current and future intellectual development? What type of programming best fits the needs of students and teachers, while also addressing the unique aspects of the museum setting? At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum they recently asked these questions while conducting a three-year quasi-experimental research study called Thinking Through Art. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination grant program, their research assessed how students developed critical-thinking skills through learning to look at art in their School Partnership Program. To best support this they realized that they needed to shift their focus from teaching thematic and historical lessons to providing more opportunities to look at and think about art. In this article, the authors reflect on this process and discuss how a new emphasis on "learning to look" helped students develop skills that are essential to both the museum and school contexts. (Contains 9 notes.)