This session explores how a professional artist residency can serve as a catalyst for research-based illustration pedagogy through collaboration with a museum. In 2023, I served as Illustrator-in-Residence at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, where my exhibition examined themes of bodily autonomy and systemic bias in medical history. Building on that experience, I developed a course partnership between the museum and my undergraduate illustration students at Columbia College Chicago. Students engaged directly with curators and collections, conducting visual research to create illustrations that reinterpreted historical and scientific narratives for contemporary audiences. The collaboration culminated in Echoes of the Collection: Artists in Conversation, a two-month exhibition of student work at the museum. This session highlights the pedagogical potential of museums as active learning environments that offer alternative opportunities for student projects—spaces where research, storytelling, and creative practice intersect to foster deeper conceptual and visual inquiry.