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
To Amphipolis and Back Again: Crisis Management, Heritage Politics and Grassroots Activism as “New Heritage” in Greece
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesGlobal Heritage at Risk University of Michigan Museum Studies Program Fall 2015 Lecture Series Speaker: Despina Margomenou, Lecturer, Department of Classical Studies, University of Michigan Co-sponsored by the U-M Department of Classical Studies Terrorism. Looting. Financial crisis. Political factionalism. Unregulated development. Neglect. The news...
The “Calculated Frightfulness” of ISIS: Threats to Middle Eastern Cultural Heritage in Historical Perspective – Panel Discussion
The so-called “Islamic State” (also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) proclaimed itself a caliphate in June 2014. Like any new state whose continued existence may be in doubt, this group has advanced its ideology through varied relationships to tangible material heritage. This talk...
Crisistunity: Re-imagining Historic Sites at the National Trust
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesGlobal Heritage at Risk University of Michigan Museum Studies Program Fall 2015 Lecture Series Speaker: Katherine Malone-France, Vice President for Historic Sites, National Trust for Historic Preservation Terrorism. Looting. Financial crisis. Political factionalism. Unregulated development. Neglect. The news is full of ongoing threats to...
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...
