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.
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...
FAILURE:LAB
U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesLocation: University of Michigan Museum of Art, Apse FAILURE:LAB provides a great opportunity to come together with members of your community and crush the stigma of failure. FAILURE:LAB is filled with storytellers and entertainers recounting their most memorable brush with failure. The audience is...
Access and the Archive: The Role of Documents Projects in a Digital Age
University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesThis brown bag will examine my practicum experience working with the Documents Project at the International Center for Art of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The ICAA is the research institute arm of the Latin American Art Curatorial Department,...
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...
Specimen Backlogs in the Age of Digitization: Strategies for Shedding Light on “Dark Data” before They Become Black Holes
Millions of specimens and their associated data are housed in museum collections, but only a small fraction of these are readily accessible through electronic means. These are now being referred to as “dark data” after a term coined in the business/IT community for the...
“History Compels Us to be Daring”: Sites of Conscience in Action Around the World
University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesThe International Coalition of Sites of Conscience was founded in 1999 with the radical idea that historic sites had an obligation to draw a connection between the history of their sites and their contemporary implications. Today, we are more than 200 museums, historic sites,...
Vagaries of Objectivity / Launen der Sachlichkeit
Rackham Graduate School 915 E. Washington Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesThe Museum Studies Program is proud to support a conference co-sponsored by the Departments of German and History of Art. The two-day conference, “Vagaries of Objectivity / Launen der Sachlichkeit” will run from Friday, January 27 to Saturday, January 28. The conference will take...
The Image Reframed: Visions of Instability
The Museum Studies Program is proud to co-sponsor the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures 21st Charles F. Fraker conference. The two-day conference, The Image Reframed: Visions of Instability, will run from Friday, February 10 to Saturday, February 11. The conference will take place in the Michigan...
Visual Culture in India and the Museum
University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesAlison Byrnes, a member of the 2006 MSP cohort, recently returned from seven years teaching in India, where she initiated a new Museum Studies Program. She will discuss museums in India through the lens of visuality. There is a mismatch between the cultural signals...
Endangered Heritage conference
War, climate change, globalization, and economic development pose significant threats to the world’s natural and cultural heritage. Societies around the world share many of the same concerns, even as specific regions, countries, and communities face unique challenges. The symposium seeks to establish a dialogue...
