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.
Translating the Museum: Multicultural Accessibility at the National Museum of Japanese History
University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesEsther Ladkau (PhD, History) The National Museum of Japanese History (known as Rekihaku), founded in 1983, is the only national history museum in Japan with government sponsorship. Its purpose is to represent the whole of the Japanese archipelago’s history and folk cultures. Since its...
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...
The God behind the Marble: Transcending the Object in the German Museum of Art
University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, United StatesAlice Goff (PhD post-doc, Michigan Society of Fellows) This presentation explores the relationship between aesthetic philosophy and art objects in public museums of art in German states in the first half of the nineteenth century. It argues that during this revolutionary period a conflict...
Rising from the Rubble: Creating the Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Title: Rising from the Rubble: Creating the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Presenter: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Chief Curator, Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews; University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies, New York University) Date: Wednesday, January...
German Studies Colloquium – January 15
Alice Goff (German/History/Society of Fellows) “Stepping onto the Pedestal: The Silence of Art in Napoleonic Prussia” Friday, January 15, 2pm 3308 MLB Alice Goff is a historian of German cultural and intellectual life in the modern period. Her research and teaching focus on the history of...
Where the Sacred and the Secular Meet: The Politics of Display at a Monastery Museum in Ladakh, India
Removed from the sanctified spaces of temples and shrines, and relocated to the secular sphere of museum galleries, Buddhist objects are transformed from icons to artifacts, from images to artworks. Within their new exhibition context, new meanings and values are imposed on these objects...
“But Is That Even a ‘Real’ Museum”? Exhibits and Their Objects at the Hockey Hall of Fame and Museum
In my brown bag presentation, I will discuss my experience completing an exhibits (and sometimes curatorial and sometimes collections) practicum at the Hockey Hall of Fame and Museum (HHOF), a non-traditional museum located downtown Toronto. With an entrance located off a mall food court,...
“History Compels Us to be Daring”: Sites of Conscience in Action Around the World
The 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,...
“A Cloth of Earth and Sky”
Every culture has found ways to restore body, mind, and spirit in nature. In this exhibit, African-American quilters from the Great Lakes region interpret how plants, gardens, and nature are embedded in cultural awareness and expressions of health. The exhibit includes inherited and contemporary...
