Experts speak. Colleagues discuss. Students engage . . . and have fun. The Video and Photo Galleries offer a window into some of the many memorable events and activities organized by the Museum Studies Program. Topical colloquia, lectures, and workshops about issues in museum studies feature prominent scholars and practitioners who examine a wide range of current issues facing the museum world. Our video samples convey the range of ideas and interests explored within the Museum Studies Program. The photos take you inside the world of our students and scholars, visually documenting their work and the life of the program.
Isabelle Gillet, PhD candidate in the History of Art Muting the Museum’s Omniscient NarratorWhy do we trust museum labels even when they sound like they were written by a disengaged but knowledgeable AI? Instead, can we rely on an “I” to guide our eye...
In the wake of postcolonial African independence, African intellectuals and politicians spearheaded a movement to pursue repatriation of artworks stolen during the colonial era and placed in Western museums. Art Historian and curator Bénédicte Savoy brings to light this largely unknown but deeply important...
Worker cooperatives to build a solidarity economy, contemporary art that grapples with history and unleashes radical imaginations about our collective futures, everyday objects and labels written by public housing residents, cultural work that contributes to more just public policies and reparations, collective joy and civic love. Learn...
L’Internationale’s Democracy Pavilion for Europe aims to reenergize democracy as a desire and practice. It takes the arts’ potential as a starting point for imagining new epistemologies and ethics of living together within the limits of the planet. The pavilion responds to the current political moment...
How do museums engage with local communities? This panel offers first-hand experience with different models of museum-based community practice. With its exhibit “Frankfurt Jetzt” (Frankfurt Now) & Stadtlabor (City Laboratory), Frankfurt’s historical museum has turned to the city’s residents as experts and invited them to participate...
In this session, Cody Thompson and Kendra Phelps will discuss their article, “Preserve a Voucher Specimen! The Critical Need for Integrating Natural History Collections in Infectious Disease Studies,” published in January 2021. With COVID-19 as an example of the failed merger of host-pathogen research...