Public programs facilitate dialogue between academics and professionals, informing scholarship and strengthening practice.
Multiple day conferences, year-long colloquia, individual lectures, “conversations” between individuals, hands-on workshops, and Museums at Noon talks featuring our graduate students all contribute to the remarkable richness of MSP offerings.
Video recordings of some MSP lectures are archived for viewing in our Media Gallery.
Lectures
2016 Museum Studies Visiting Scholar presentation: The Challenges of Pursing Intentionality
The Cycle of Intentional Practice requires that museums clarify the impact they would like to achieve on their publics and realign all practices and resources to achieve that impact. Clarifying impact, though, requires a knowledge of the museum’s organizational self and the public. Given...
Taking a Look in the Mirror: Transformative Change within Museums
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesLocation: University of Michigan Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium Museums do not exist in a vacuum. The external environment around museums is in a state of constant change. Yet, it seems as though museums continue to approach diversity and inclusion work through community...
Tactics for the Anthropocene: Not an Alternative
Michigan Theater 603 E. Liberty, Ann Arbor, MILocation: Michigan Theater (603 E. Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor) Not An Alternative is a NY-based collective that works at the intersection of art, activism, and critical theory. Its mission is to affect popular understandings of histories, symbols, and institutions through the occupation...
What if? Demand the Impossible. On Museums and the Struggle for Social Justice
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesLocation: University of Michigan Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium What if museums were to acknowledge their complicity with systemic forms of oppression, and commit to a reparations movement as part of a process of truth and reconciliation? What if museum and exhibition programs...
Inclusion Requires Fracturing
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesLocation: University of Michigan Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium As museums strive to serve broad, ever-diversifying publics, it is no longer possible to deny the ways museums mirror and reinforce racial, cultural, and class inequities of the broader society. Skillful racial and cultural...
University Natural History Museums: Portals of Discovery in the Anthropocene
Rackham Graduate School 915 E. Washington Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesA conversation between: James Hanken - Director, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Diarmaid O Foighil - Chair, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, U-M Many of the world's great universities have natural history museums founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
Learning by Leading: A New Model for Expanding Museum Impact
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesA conversation between: Kathleen Socolofsky - Director, Arboretum and Public Garden, University of California, Davis Bob Grese - Director, Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, U-M During this time of immense and sometimes disorienting change, museums are perfectly positioned to step into new...
Time to Evolve: The Histories and Futures of Two University Natural History Museums
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesA conversation between: Julie Stein - Executive Director, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington Amy Harris - Director, Museum of Natural History, U-M University natural history collections were central to the scientific enterprise in the 19th century. Today, these collections...
Museums of the Past into the Future: The Oriental Institute and the Kelsey Museum
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesA conversation between: Chris Woods, Director, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Terry G. Wilfong, Director, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, U-M The Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan share similar backgrounds...
What Do Curators Know?
Michigan League Ann Arbor, MITuesday, March 27 at 6:30 pm Michigan League (Michigan Room) Presentation by Steven Lubar Professor of American Studies, History of Art and Architecture, and History, Brown University and Museum Studies Program Visiting Scholar Curators are experts on an astonishing range of topics. But what else...
