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
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...
Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice: the Case of the Jim Crow Museum
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesThe Jim Crow Museum is the nation’s largest publicly accessible collection of racist artifacts. Located on the campus of Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, the museum houses more than 12,000 objects—primarily, but not exclusively, segregation era artifacts and everyday anti-black caricatured objects....
A Swift Death and Steady Resurrection: Salvage Anthropology and U.S. Museums
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesPresentation by Samuel J. Redman What should museums do with stolen artifacts? Should the response be similar with stolen knowledge? This talk explores the history and legacy of salvage anthropology as it relates to museums in the United States. Salvage anthropology was a movement...
Listening to Object Witnesses: Decolonizing Research in Museum Collections
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesPresentation by Dr. Margaret M. Bruchac How do Indigenous objects in museum collections speak to those who collect, curate, observe, and claim them? The observable materials and patterns of construction obviously reflect particular ecosystems, cultures, and technologies, but do these objects also retain memories...
