THERE have been many strange sightings outside the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Marcel Breuer building over the years: a giant bird’s nest precariously perched on the cantilevered entrance; a neon sign that spelled out “Negro Sunshine”; and a giant replica of a toy fire truck parked at the curb for nearly three months, to name a few. So it is hardly surprising that recent passers-by don’t seem at all curious at the sight of tall black shipping containers rising from the sculpture court.

It is not, as most people assume, some wacky installation for the 2012 Biennial, which opened on March 1. It is perhaps the first-ever pop-up education center at a New York museum.

“We really do put education front and center,” said Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s director.

Known as the Whitney Studio, it will stay there until the museum moves to its new home in Manhattan’s meatpacking district in 2015. The design is singular — a 600-square-foot space composed of six black-painted shipping containers that form a 17-foot-tall studio space and storage mezzanine — and the idea is perhaps the most tangible example of what museum education is about these days.