Museum Studies Program, U-M Rackham Graduate School

CLIFF 2020: (Counter) Narratives of Migration
2020-03-13 09:00 - 17:00 (America/Detroit) | Michigan League, Ann Arbor, MI
This event needed to be cancelled to to COVID-19 precautions.
The Museum Studies Program is proud to co-sponsor the 2020 CLIFF conference. CLIFF is an annual conference organized by graduate students in Comparative Literature. This year’s conference theme, “(Counter) Narratives of Migration,” stems from the current migration crises around the globe, but is not restricted to the present moment. The conference seeks to interrogate the narrativization, visibility, and media surrounding the movement of bodies, ideas and material objects across concrete and abstract boundaries. We will explore circulation in all its forms, through its various manifestations in the arts, critical theory, and new media.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Ariella Azoulay, Professor of Comparative Literature and filmmaker and art curator, currently teaching at Brown University. Azoulay’s work explores visual culture, offering an in-depth critique of contemporary forms of violence, imperialism and body politics. Her films, exhibitions and scholarship address gendered and racial violence, the Israel-Palestine conflict, civil engagement, and human rights.
Additional information about the conference can be found here.

Listening to Object Witnesses: Decolonizing Research in Museum Collections
2020-03-10 18:30 - 19:30 | U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium, 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Presentation 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 of the artisans who created them? Do they wield more than just imagined meaning or distributed agency? In this talk, Dr. Bruchac discusses strategies for recovering object histories through material analyses, consultation, and critical re-assessments of imposed museological categories (e.g., art, artifact, utilitarian, etc.) that may have distanced objects from their origins and isolated them from others like themselves. Case histories will feature new research into iconic creations – such as a 17th century wooden war club embedded with re-purposed wampum beads, and a shell bead wampum belt with a single glass bead – that function as “object witnesses” to entangled colonial settler/Indigenous encounters. Through her practice of “reverse ethnography,” Bruchac will reveal how, in many cases, memories can be reawakened when otherwise mysterious objects are reconnected with the stories, ecosystems, knowledges, and communities that created them. Object histories can also be recovered by tracking the desires and actions of non-Indigenous curators and collectors who transported these objects and stories to physically and conceptually distant locales.

Dr. Margaret M. Bruchac is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Associate Faculty in the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a consultant to the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society, and Director of “The Wampum Trail,” a restorative research project designed to reconnect wampum belts in museum collections with their related Indigenous communities. Bruchac is co-editor, with Siobhan Hart and H. Martin Wobst, of “Indigenous Archaeologies: A Reader in Decolonization” (Left Coast Press 2010). Her new book – “Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists” (University of Arizona Press 2018) – was the winner of the 2018 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award.

March 10 at 6:30 pm
UM Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium

Co-sponsored by the Department of American Culture; Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies; LSA/Great Lakes Theme Semester; Native American and Indigenous Student Interest Group; Native American Studies Program; Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS); UM Museum of Anthropological Archaeology; UM Office of Research

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Reception for prospective students
2020-01-27 17:00 - 19:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Are you interested in museums, collections, or heritage sites? If so, consider applying for the graduate certificate in museum studies for Fall 2020. This reception is an informal opportunity to learn more about the program from faculty and students who are already affiliated with it.
January 27 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm (UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room)
2020 recruiting poster 8.5 x 11 reception

Study Days at UMMA, Dec 12-15
2019-12-12 08:00 - 2019-12-15 20:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art
From December 12 through December 15, come to the University of Michigan Museum of Art for four days of studying and stress relief. Extra tables and couches will be set up throughout the museum and galleries. In addition to ample study space, self-care and stress-relieving activities will be planned around the museum. See the Study Days at UMMA web page for a complete schedule of activities.
(co-sponsored by the Museum Studies Program)

Riding the Wave: The changing role of museums and museum professionals
2019-11-12 18:30 - 19:30 | Rackham Graduate School, 915 E. Washington Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Riding the Wave: The changing role of museums and museum professionals
Presentation by Paula Gangopadhyay
The presenter, a respected and recognized leader in the national museum, cultural, policy, philanthropy and education sectors, offers unique insight about the field gleaned from a highly successful 25 year career.
The 21st century offers exciting opportunities for museums and museum professionals to rethink and reimagine their roles. According to Gangopadhyay, “The power of riding the wave and leveraging the opportunities for growth and sustainability lies within us.” The talk will offer insight into the importance of breaking the mold and present examples of how some organizations are succeeding as innovative leaders.
Paula Gangopadhyay is the Deputy Director heading the Office of Museum Services at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in Washington DC. Prior to this role, she served on the National Board of IMLS, appointed by President Barack Obama. She has held several leadership positions in Michigan, most recently serving as the Chief Learning Officer at The Henry Ford for eight years.
Rackham Graduate School, East Conference Room (4th floor)

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Repatriation and Restitution of Cultural Heritage
2019-10-25 14:30 - 15:30 | Classics Library
Repatriation and Restitution of Cultural Heritage: Museums, Universities, and the Ethics of Community Engagement
Department of Classical Studies
DEI Committee
Roundtable:
Repatriation and Restitution of Cultural Heritage: Museums, Universities, and the Ethics of Community Engagement
October 25, 2:30-3:30PM
Classics Library
This roundtable was prompted by similar events in US universities (e.g. Brown University), after the publication of the Savoy report in November 2018 (The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Towards a New Relational Ethics.) The report defines restitution and outlines its implications beyond questions of legitimate ownership which often dominate discussions on the topic.
From the report: “Restitutions open up a profound reflection on history, memories, and the colonial past, concerning the history as well as the formation and development of Western museum collections. But just as importantly the question of restitution also bears on the question of the different interpretations or conceptions of cultural heritage, of the museum, and their various modalities of the presentation of objects as well as their circulation and, in the end, the nature and quality of relations between people and nation.”
According to the report, stolen and looted objects constitute a “diaspora” and additional violence is inscribed onto the objects themselves as they are altered, reshaped, varnished, cleaned, etc. How are such objects to be “restituted” and “repatriated”, the report asks? And why seek to repatriate at all? Does repatriation foster community engagement? What are the power dynamics among the multiple stakeholders in such engagements?
The report raises questions that resonate beyond African Art and with this event we hope to raise similar questions as they pertain to our institutional and disciplinary practices.
The roundtable brings together specialists from different fields:
Brendan Haug, Assistant Professor, Classical Studies and Archivist of the UM Papyrology Collection
Shelley Perlove, Professor Emerita, History of Art
Ray Silverman, Professor History of Art, DAAS, Museum Studies
Lisa C. Young, Lecturer IV, Anthropology, Research Affiliate Museum of Anthropology

“The Unvarnished Truth”: Reframing the National Narrative at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
2019-10-22 19:00 - 20:00 | U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium, 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Presentation by William S. Pretzer, Senior Curator of History, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on the National Mall in Washington, DC, in September 2016. More than six million individuals have visited the museum in its first three years of operation.
The Presidential Commission created in 2001 directed the museum to “give voice to the centrality of the African American experience and make it possible for all people to understand the depth, complexity, and promise of the American experience.”
From the beginning, Founding Director Lonnie G. Bunch III and his staff heeded the exhortation of historian John Hope Franklin, chair of the museum’s Scholarly Advisory Committee, “to tell the unvarnished truth.” That principle energized an exhibition plan informed by public conversations, a collecting program relying on individual and family legacies, a narrative format balancing the personal with the social, and a funding strategy emphasizing the “African American experience as the lens through which we understand what it is to be American.”
This presentation demonstrates the impact of these foundational principles and strategies through an illustrated tour of the inaugural exhibitions.

William Pretzer is the Senior Curator for History at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture where he is developing the museum’s Center for African American Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He co-curated “A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond,” one of the museum’s twelve inaugural exhibitions. Pretzer began his museum career as a historian at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History from 1980-1984. Following tenure as a Project Director at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, he then spent 21 years as a curator and educator at The Henry Ford in Michigan where he developed exhibitions, chaired the museum’s Collection and Publication committees, and served as Director of Educational Programs. From 2006 to 2009 he served as Director of the Museum of Cultural & Natural History as well as Director of the Museum Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at Central Michigan University.

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"Take Your Pick" exhibition selection - UM Museum of Art
2019-09-20 14:00 - 15:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art
Date: Friday, September 20
Time & Location: 2:00 pm, UM Museum of Art
UMMA invites Museum Studies Program students to an exclusive meet and greet with collector Peter Cohen, whose photographs are the subject of UMMA’s upcoming interactive exhibition Take Your Pick. Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection.

What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography.

Join us for an exclusive sneak preview with Peter Cohen and Assistant Curator of Photography Jennifer Friess for a discussion about this unique crowdsourcing experiment on Friday, September 20, 2-3 p.m. at UMMA.

Attendees will have the opportunity to cast votes and participate in the interactive components of the exhibition which opens to the public the following day.

Space is limited so we ask that students RSVP no later than September 16 to secure their spot to briannon@umich.edu.

UMMA Take Your Pick Poster

Reinstalling Early Greece at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2019-04-19 12:00 - 13:00
Date: Friday, April 19
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Caitlin Clerkin (PhD candidate, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art & Archaeology)
Reinstalling Early Greece at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In the course of my practicum at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I aided in research and planning for a reinstallation of a permanent gallery. From my position in the Greek and Roman Art section of the Art of the Ancient World department, my main project focused on planning a new gallery of “early Greek”—post-Bronze Age, pre-Persian Wars—art. My work consisted largely of object-based research, and wider research into framing and scholarly trends. In this work, I (with the curator) thought about balancing familiar—and sometimes outdated—narratives with new scholarship, how to balance the desire for “full coverage” with idiosyncratic collections, what stories to tell, and how to strike a balance between only using ancient objects illustratively and fetishizing them as decontextualized objects. In this presentation, I’ll especially address issues we faced that are common to decision-making for ancient art galleries, particularly regarding narratives—both in the sense of the arguments being made in galleries and the narratives with which visitors enter the galleries.
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MSP18 Student Capstone Presentations
2019-04-17 18:00 - 20:00
Presentations for this evening are as follows:
6:00 pm “Curating Exhibition, Education, and Engagement at the Detroit Observatory”
Presented by Emily Finch, Erin Johnston-Weiss, Aleksandra Kuznetsova
Host institution: Detroit Observatory

7:00 pm “Cobblestone Farm: Connecting Past and Present in the Wood Shed Space”
Presented by Alexandra Norwood, Alice Register, Lucy Smith
Host institution: Cobblestone Farm

Presentations will be held in 5670 Haven Hall, Eldersveld Room

A full schedule of all Capstone presentations can soon be found here.

MSP18 Student Capstone Presentations
2019-04-15 18:00 - 20:00
Presentations for this evening are as follows:
6:00 pm “Combining the Subjective and the Objective: Assessing Visitor Motivation at UMMA“
Presented by Tori Cox, Kimberly Ransom, Tina Tahir
Host institution: University of Michigan Museum of Art

7:00 pm “Interpreting Incarceration: U.S. Prison Museums and Their Publics”
Presented by Eimeel Castillo Dona, Emily Cornish
Host institution: Cell Block Seven

Presentations will be held in 5670 Haven Hall, Eldersveld Room

A full schedule of all Capstone presentations can soon be found here.

Online Collections and Teaching Whiteness at the University of Michigan Museum of Art
2019-04-12 12:00 - 13:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Date: Friday, April 12
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Christopher Mulvey (PhD, Anthropology)
Online Collections and Teaching Whiteness at the University of Michigan Museum of Art
Over the summer of 2018, I worked as an intern with the Education Department at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, creating teaching resources with themes centered on “whiteness” and “masculinities.” Using the online system “The Exchange,” I reviewed UMMA’s collection and generated new Teaching Collections and Resources on aspects of the collection that were relatively underexplored, in addition to leading several tours centered on race, ethnicity, and gender. This work opened questions of access, knowledge production, and the value of underutilized collections. My Brown Bag talk will highlight how museums can begin to loosen their grip on curating collections through the creation and maintenance of systems like The Exchange, which offer chances for both University and broader publics to engage with shaping how images can be put into conversation with one another. In addition, I will discuss curating whiteness and masculinities—subjects that often fall by the wayside in teaching both history and art—in an effort to illustrate how the museum can broadly effect change and work against its colonial history.
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Enhancing Access to Roman Ceramics at the Harvard Art Museums
2019-03-29 12:00 - 13:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Date: Friday, March 29
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Alison Rittershaus (PhD candidate, Interdisciplinary Program in Classical Art & Archaeology)
Enhancing Access to Roman Ceramics at the Harvard Art Museums
This talk discusses the tensions revealed between the shifting mission of a university museum and the complicated history of its collections during my internship in the curatorial department of Asian and Mediterranean Art at the Harvard Art Museums. In addition to shadowing department faculty and staff throughout ongoing strategizing about publications, exhibitions, and teaching accessibility with the goal of broadening the museum’s audience, I worked on researching its substantial collection of Roman ceramic lamps, fleshing out their entries in the online catalogue and proposing methods to integrate them into classroom teaching and gallery displays.
Just as the institution is an agglomeration of multiple museums searching for a cohesive brand identity, the lamp collection presents an accumulation of objects that resists neat categorization. They arrived over the course of more than a century, residing in a variety of Harvard-affiliated collections before finding a permanent home in the art museum. Though they are archaeological objects, with very few interesting primarily for their aesthetic value, many lack information about their origin and many can be easily identified as modern forgeries or reproductions. This talk explores the process of trying to use the constraints to put the lamp collection to use in service of the larger museum’s goals.
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From Club to Third Space: On the Interrogation and Creation of Community at the Scarab Club, Detroit
2019-03-22 12:00 - 13:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Date: Friday, March 22
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Megan Berkobien (PhD candidate, Comparative Literature)
From Club to Third Space: On the Interrogation and Creation of Community at the Scarab Club, Detroit
For over a century, the Scarab Club has been an important gathering space for artists and patrons in Detroit’s museum district. Yet, while the Scarab Club takes its mission as “foster[ing] a stronger, more vibrant arts community in Detroit,” the majority of its members and staff live outside of the city. In this sense, it is no surprise that the once-exclusive Club has yet to transcend its legacy as an organization closed to large swaths of the Detroit community, including those most marginalized by the suburb-city divide. As an intern, I worked alongside staff to get intentional about community making and inclusion. In addition to assisting in day-to-day operations, I designed a visitor’s survey, supported and coordinated programming that featured Detroiters of color, and facilitated conversations about equity and governance whenever possible. In this talk, I will discuss how the Club might confront its history of exclusion through creative exhibition and programming, and, by doing so, better position itself as a gallery and arts venue that uplifts artists from within the city.
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"Ancient Color" exhibit reception and opening lecture
2019-03-20 16:00 - 19:00 | Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 434 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109
Join us in a discussion about the study of pigments and dyes in the ancient world with archaeologist Hilary Becker (State University of New York), conservation scientist Greg Smith (Indianapolis Museum of Art), art historian Mark Abbe (Lamar Dodd School of Art @ University of Georgia), and conservation scientist Christina Bisulca (Detroit Institute of Arts). The audience is encouraged to join the discussion.
The Kelsey Museum galleries and the exhibition “Ancient Color” will be open from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Reception at the Kelsey Museum with non-alcoholic beverages from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
After the reception, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., join us for the discussion in the Helmut Stern Auditorium at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

“Ancient Color” will be on exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology from February 8 – May 26, 2019.

Additional information can be found here.

AC_Invite Card_Back_1.15.19

Locating and Relocating Lugdunum: Collection Management at Lugdunum — Musée et théâtres romains, Lyon
2019-03-15 12:00 - 13:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Date: Friday, March 15
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Craig Harvey (PhD candidate, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art & Archaeology)
Locating and Relocating Lugdunum: Collection Management at Lugdunum — Musée et théâtres romains, Lyon
The archaeology museum of Lyon, recently renamed to Lugdunum – Musée et théâtres romains, is located on the hill of Fourvière, overlooking the ancient theatres of the Roman city of Lugdunum. This museum is home to an impressive collection of artefacts from the city of Lyon and the surrounding region. The museum’s collection can be divided into two parts. The first, known as the fonds ancien, comprises thousands of inscriptions, statues, and other ancient works of art collected over the centuries by Lyon’s Musée des Beaux-Arts and gifted to the archaeology museum at its opening in 1975. The second part is the ever-increasing collection of archaeological artefacts uncovered by excavation and deposited in the museum repository, as is required by French law. The fact that many of the museum’s objects have been in collections for centuries coupled with the growing number of artefacts from new excavations makes for a difficult collection to manage.
This past fall, I had the opportunity to work with the museum’s collection, both assisting with an inventory of all artefacts on display and helping with the move of the museum’s storage to an off-site facility. During my time at the museum, I encountered issues concerning the accessibility and documentation of this very large and old collection. In addition to discussing these issues, this talk will provide a brief introduction to Lugdunum – Musée et théâtres romains and give an overview of my internship there. It will also present examples of how the museum is making its collection more accessible to scholars despite recently moving the majority of its storage to a decentralized location. These initiatives include the creation of an online database and the use of new gallery spaces outside the museum.
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A Swift Death and Steady Resurrection: Salvage Anthropology and U.S. Museums
2019-03-12 18:30 - 19:30 | U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium, 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Presentation 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 responding to the perceived threat of extinction faced by indigenous societies around the world. The movement brought millions of material culture objects to museums, inspired the creation of audio recordings by the thousands, and pushed artists to depict Native Americans in new ways. Museums in the United States even began collecting human remains, with over 500,000 individual sets of human remains ultimately ending up in museum storerooms. This talk examines the complex history and legacy of salvage anthropology, especially for indigenous communities in the United States today.

Samuel J. Redman teaches public history, oral history, and modern U.S. history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Redman is the author of Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard, 2016). He earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota, Morris and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before graduate school he worked in the Science Museum of Minnesota, Field Museum of Natural History, and Colorado History Museum. His recent articles include, “The Smithsonian at War: Museums in U.S. Society during World War II,” “Impossible Appraisals: Art, Anthropology, and the Limits of Evaluating Museum Collections in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States,” “Have Anthropology Museums Become History Museums?: A Visit to Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg, Germany,” and “The Hearst Museum of Anthropology, the New Deal, and a Reassessment of the ‘Dark Age’ of the Museum in the United States.”

March 12 at 6:30 pm
UM Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium

Co-sponsored by the Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS); Program in Science, Technology and Public Policy (STPP); Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies; UM Kelsey Museum of Archaeology; UM Museum of Anthropological Archaeology; UM Museum of Natural History

Redman lecture announcement

Interpreting Objects and Exhibitions at the National Museum of Eritrea
2019-03-01 12:00 - 13:00
Date: Friday, March 1
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: Timnet Gedar (PhD candidate, History)
Interpreting Objects and Exhibitions at the National Museum of Eritrea
The National Museum of Eritrea was established in 1992, a year after the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front earned victory in a thirty-year war for independence. This history has shaped the nature of exhibits and interpretation at the museum in ways that both limit outcomes and allow for creativity. In this presentation, I weave together this history with my practical work of writing object labels and exhibit introductions in order to understand the meaning and challenges of interpretive content at museums — especially museums in a postcolonial African setting.
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Dealing with Africa and African Things at the Ethnografiska Museet, Stockholm
2019-02-15 12:00 - 13:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Date: Friday, February 15
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: UM Museum of Art, Multi-Purpose Room (125)
Presenter: James Munene (PhD, Anthropology)
Dealing with Africa and African Things at the Ethnografiska Museet, Stockholm
The Ethnografiska Museet (Museum of Ethnography), Stockholm became part of the Swedish Museums of World Culture in 1999. The museum has a collection of about 220,000 items from different parts of the continent. The first collection from Africa came to Sweden in the 18th century from South Africa. Today, the museum has over 900 collections from 47 out of 54 countries in Africa. In the early 20th century, Swedish missionaries brought back a large number of objects from the Congo, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
Representation of Africa and collections from Africa is an issue the museum has struggled with over the last many years. During my internship at the museum, I was engaged in several activities surrounding this issue. My talk will mirror some on my experiences focusing on the subject areas relating to learning from objects, the museum in the changing world and museum identity and representation.
BrownBag_Munene

Career discussion luncheon
2019-02-11 12:00 - 13:00 | Haven Hall, Eldersveld Room, 505 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, 48109
Current students might be interested in attending the upcoming “How Did You Get Here?” Career Discussion Luncheon on Monday, February 11 from 12-1pm in Elderveld (5th Floor Heaven). This session will feature Dr. Heather Ann Thompson (History, DAAS, & Residential College) and Dr. Joseph Cialdella (Rackham Program for Public Scholarship and MSP Steering Committee member). Both Dr. Thompson and Dr. Cialdella work outside the academy in a variety of capacities (including museums/ cultural institutions). This is an informal event that might be of interest to MSP students and allows grad students to connect with faculty and staff about their careers, ask questions, and get to know folks outside of their immediate circle.

Reception for prospective students - Feb 6
2019-02-06 17:00 - 19:00
The Museum Studies Program invites students enrolled in any graduate program at the University of Michigan to apply for admission starting in Fall 2019. This multidisciplinary graduate certificate program draws on ideas from the arts, humanities, natural and social sciences, and technology and provides countless opportunities to apply theories in a vast array of museums and cultural institutions on campus, in the region, nationally and around the world.
The MSP curriculum examines the role of museums in society as sites of memory, learning, research, cultural production, public scholarship, civic engagement, and entertainment. The 12-credit certificate program consists of the Museum Studies Seminar (Fall and Winter terms, 6 credits), approved electives (6 credits), and a funded internship. It prepares students for academic and professional careers in museums, heritage sites, arboretums, botanical gardens, zoos and other living collections, and universities.
Applications are currently being accepted for Fall 2019
Application Deadline: March 1, 2019
A reception will be held for interested students to talk with current students and faculty to learn more about the program. The reception will be held February 6 from 5:00 – 7:00 pm in the UM Museum of Art Multi-Purpose Room (125).

2019 recruiting poster 8.5 x 11 reception

Student Late Night: Art in the Age of the Internet
2019-01-24 19:00 - 22:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art
Thursday, January 24
7:00 pm – 10:00 pm
UM Museum of Art

Organized by U-M students for U-M students, and inspired by the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, the 10th annual Student Late Night event at UMMA will be a fun-filled creative explosion!
The internet has changed every aspect of contemporary life—from how we interact with each other to how we work and play. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. This exhibition presents more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects.
Come to the party and enjoy some of the best fun that the digital age has to offer! Participate in live collaborative art making, motion graphics, and sound mixing. Have fun at the Silent Disco, snag some free food, and have a blast!
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and curated by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator.

Student Late Night: Art in the Age of the Internet is brought to you by the Student Collective at UMMA in partnership with Maize Collective, and co-sponsored by Arts at Michigan, ArtsEngine, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, the Institute for the Humanities, the History of Art Department, American Culture, and the Museum Studies Program, with additional support from the African Student Association.

AIAI Student Late Night Final

Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series: Consolation, JuYeon Kim
2019-01-23 17:30 - 2019-01-24 19:00
Born in Seoul, South Korea, JuYeon Kim works and lives in New York. She has shown in both solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including New York, Washington, DC, Shanghai, and Seoul. Additionally, Kim has been awarded several residencies such as MacDowell Colony, Kohler Arts Center, Triangle, and the Roswell Artist in Residence Fellowship. Kim has also held several positions as a visiting artist and professor. A 2018–2019 Roman Witt Resident, Kim is creating a multimedia installation work in collaboration with the Stamps School community and composer George Tsontakis that seeks to explore themes around Korean “comfort women”— the female prisoners of the Japanese army during World War II. Kim states: “Although my installation project was conceived and initiated before my awareness of the #MeToo movement developing in the States and around the world, it seems to me to be so poignantly connected to the historical plight of women everywhere. While the travails of the Korean ‘comfort women’ are an extreme example of women’s integrity being compromised, the assault sadly continues on various levels and by different degrees.”
Presented with support from the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and the Institute for the Humanities.
Additional details can be found here.

Museums as Sites of Healing: Empathy, Repair, and Critical Reflection
2018-12-07 12:00 - 13:00 | University of Michigan Museum of Art, First Floor, Multi-Purpose Room, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
What are the ethical responsibilities of university museums when our local communities face profound crises and occasions of injustice? How might we foster compassion and promote conversations that can build enduring community bonds, while honoring our academic commitments to promoting critical analysis and stewardship of our scientific and cultural collections?
Michigan State University Museum Director Mark Auslander explores several instances, in which museums have grappled with moral challenges close to home, including facing up to legacies of slavery on a college campuses and the threatened mass eviction of a low-income neighborhood. His primary case study is the MSU Museum’s current partnership with the survivors of the horrific sexual abuse crisis at MSU, in which the museum has committed to collecting material culture and narratives associated with the crisis and co-curating with survivors and parents an exhibition on the scandal, its ramifications, and struggles for institutional transformation. What lessons have been learned and how might we, together, chart productive pathways forward?
Presented by Mark Auslander – Director, MSU Museum and Associate Professor of Anthropology and History, Michigan State University
December 7 at 12:00 pm, UM Museum of Art Multi-Purpose Room

co-sponsored by the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies

BrownBag_Auslander

photography credit Pearl Yee Wong

African Art in Museums: Ethical Quandaries
2018-10-26 18:00 - 20:00
“Where do you think your ancestors got these?” asks Eric Killmonger in the recent Black Panther film. Join us for a discussion facilitated by African Art Historian Ray Silverman with curators, activists and scholars Nii Quarcoopome (Detroit Institute of Arts), Sylvester Ogbechie (UC Santa Barbara), and Monica Udvardy (University of Kentucky) about what we can learn from the display of African art objects in Western art museums, diving deep into fraught questions of collecting, display, and repatriation.
This program is co-sponsored by the U-M Institute for the Humanities and the Museum Studies Program.
Lead support for Beyond Borders: Global Africa is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Michigan Medicine, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the University of Michigan Office of Research, African Studies Center, and Department of Afroamerican and African Studies. Additional generous support is provided by the University of Michigan CEW+ Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund and Susan Ullrich.
Friday, October 26, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium, UM Museum of Art

Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice: the Case of the Jim Crow Museum
2018-10-23 18:30 - 19:30 | U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium, 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
The 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. The museum’s innovative mission—which doubles as its tagline—is “using objects of intolerance to teach tolerance.” As such, the Jim Crow Museum serves as a compelling model for all museums to consider.
Prof. David Pilgrim, founder and current director of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia also serves as Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion at Ferris State University.
Please note that some may be offended by the images in the presentation.

October 23, 2018 at 6:30 p.m., Stern Auditorium, University of Michigan Museum of Art

Presented by the University of Michigan Museum Studies Program with the support of the Office of the Vice President for Student Life, the School of Information, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Pilgrim lecture announcement_Final

Dr. David Pilgrim, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion at Ferris State University, is one of this country’s leading experts on issues relating to multiculturalism, diversity, and race relations. He has been interviewed by National Public Radio, Time magazine, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and dozens of newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. Dr. Pilgrim is best known as the founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum — a 11,000 piece collection of racist artifacts located at Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Michigan. The museum, innovatively, uses objects of intolerance to teach tolerance. Dr. Pilgrim’s writings, many found at www.ferris.edu/jimcrow, are used by scholars, students, and civil rights workers to better understand historical and contemporary expressions of racism.
Dr. Pilgrim is an applied sociologist with a doctorate from The Ohio State University. He believes that racism can be objectively studied and creatively assailed. In 2004, he produced with Clayton Rye the documentary Jim Crow’s Museum to explain his approach to battling racism. The film won several awards including Best Documentary at the 2004 Flint Film Festival. Dr. Pilgrim’s writings, scholarly and creative, deal with multiculturalism and race relations. His short stories have been published in Calaloo, Obsidian, African American Review, Aim, and Shooting Star. He is the author of Understanding Jim Crow: Using Objects of Intolerance to Teach Tolerance (PM Press, 2015), used as a text in teaching undergraduates in the Museum Studies Minor at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Pilgrim challenges audiences to think deeply about diversity and race relations. He is a Ferris State University Distinguished Teacher. Dr. Pilgrim has spent his adult life using objects of intolerance to teach tolerance. It works. His goal is to get people talking about diversity and race relations in meaningful ways — and, then, to go and do something positive.

Expansive Realities: A Longer History of the “Virtual” in Art, Architecture, and Visual Culture
2018-09-29 09:00 - 17:00 | U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium, 525 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
Keynote speaker: Kristina Kleutghen, David. W. Mesker Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Chinese Art and Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis
The History of Art Department at the University of Michigan presents graduate student presentations for its biannual Graduate Symposium, Expansive Realities: A Longer History of the “Virtual” in Art, Architecture, and Visual Culture.
As artistic practice increasingly engages with digital media and the virtual, our symposium aims to foster discussions of the theoretical, social, and cultural nature of this phenomenon. While often linked to the digital age, the virtual implies imagined and immersive spaces that defy material and physical boundaries. Presentations will examine intersections between art and the virtual in a variety of historical and cultural contexts, investigating the virtual not only in relation to contemporary visual culture, but also as a phenomenon extending to the pre-modern periods of the history of art.
Co-sponsored by UM Museum Studies Program, UM Museum of Art, Department of Classical Studies, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Department of American Culture, Comparative Literature, Confucius Institute, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, Slavic Languages & Literatures, Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology

EIHS Symposium: Museum Stories: The Ethics of Collecting
2018-09-14 12:00 - 14:00 | Tisch Hall, 435 State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
What constitutes rightful ownership of cultural objects? The unprecedented looting of modern wars as well as various protest movements have spawned international regulations, declarations, and efforts that offer guidance in this regard. The extant framework, however, falls short of exhausting the ethical problems raised by artifacts, their histories, and their displays. For museum and university collections these questions have gained the greatest urgency. Our panel offers reflections on this vast terrain; three case studies will follow an opening contribution by one of the foremost experts on restitution, repatriation, and cultural heritage law.
Panelists:
Patty Gerstenblith, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, DePaul University
Raymond Silverman, Professor, History of Art, Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan
Terry G. Wilfong, Director / Curator of Graeco-Roman Egyptian Collections, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan
Yao-Fen You, Associate Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative ArtsDetroit Institute of Arts
Helmut Puff (chair), Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Collegiate Professor of History and Germanic Languages, University of Michigan
1014 Tisch Hall
Additional details here.

Beyond Borders: Global Africa
2018-08-11 08:00 - 2018-11-25 17:00
More than ever in the era of globalization, ideas traverse geographic, generational, and cultural boundaries, even as national borders seem to be closing. Beyond Borders: Global Africa reflects on this moment by considering how Africa and its artists have been at the center of complex histories of encounter and exchange for centuries. Bringing together a dazzling array of works made in Africa, Europe, and the United States from the nineteenth to twenty-first century, the exhibition demonstrates the international scope and reach of art from Africa and the African diaspora. It also explores issues such as slavery, colonization, migration, racism, and identity at play in the objects and their histories. Highlights include paintings, photographs, sculpture, and installations by Kudzanai Chiurai, Omar Victor Diop, Wangechi Mutu, and Serge Alain Nitegeka. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication, the tenth in the UMMA Books series.
Lead support for Beyond Borders: Global Africa is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Michigan Medicine, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the University of Michigan Office of Research, African Studies Center, and Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and the Museum Studies Program. Additional generous support is provided by the University of Michigan CEW+ Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund and Susan Ullrich.
Exhibit runs August 11 – November 25 at the UM Museum of Art
The full schedule can be found here.

Curator Talk - Excavating Archaeology at UM: 1817 - 2017
2018-05-06 14:00 - 15:00 | Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 434 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109
Join the curators of “Excavating Archaeology @ UM: 1817-2017,” Terry Wilfong and Carla Sinopoli, for a public tour of the exhibition at the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.
This exhibition explores the history of archaeology and museums at the University of Michigan for the past 200 years and looks forward to the future of archaeology and museums at Michigan in the coming century. The exhibition relies on carefully chosen objects, archival documents and images, and other illustrative materials to examine moments in the history of the University of Michigan’s involvements in archaeology and the location of archaeology in the museum environment.
The tour/exhibition is free and open to the public.
