Image Description: The Washington Square Arch on a clear fall day. The Washington Square Arch is obscured partially by a changing canopy of green, orange, and yellow leaves.

Image Description: Photo of Dr. Rosanna Flouty facing the camera. She has short dark hair, and she is wearing a dark suit and gold accent jewelry. 

Welcome to our fall newsletter! We hope that everyone has been enjoying these last few days of summer before classes start up again and the cool crisp days of fall are soon upon us. 

It was hardly a quiet summer for museum news. The Guggenheim announced that its staff had ratified a union contract just as it raised admission prices to $30, ranking it as one of the highest museum admissions in the country. The Met has slowly come to realize that one of its most generous trustees elected to engage in dubious collecting practices even while remaining steadfast to the field of archaeology. And in a brazen act of profiteering, the former director of the Orlando Museum attempted to hang and sell Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings that were simply faked. So it has been hard not to watch the British Museum’s recent theft scandals with some degree of ​​schadenfreude. Despite confirmed allegations that its own staff had been pilfering items from its collections and selling them (on Ebay, no less!), the British Museum has blatantly refrained from repatriating pilfered artifacts for decades. Ironically, the British Museum has argued that repatriation of stolen artifacts back to their countries of origin could lead to theft or damage. Such claims are even more “insulting and ridiculous” now that the theft of over 2,000 British Museum objects by an employee has been exposed this month.  A meme making the rounds in Venice has now made its way to the British Museum galleries containing the stolen Parthenon Marbles, via a remix POV video with the refrain, “Attenzione! Pickpocket!”  

Here at NYU’s Museum Studies Program, we have many exciting fall events ahead of us, and I wanted to be sure I highlight a few of them. In addition to our New Student Orientation on August 30th, we will also be hosting a Fall Welcome Event on the evening of Friday, September 8th at Glucksman Ireland House for all of our faculty, adjuncts and students. You will have a chance to meet some of our alum and new faculty that night. Many of our students have expressed a wish to learn more about one another’s theses topics. For this welcome event, we have asked five of our recent Museum Studies alum to present a three-minute presentation of their Museum Studies theses, hosted and emceed by two members of our Museum Studies Alumni Association. Mentorship forms a large part of our program, and so you will also hear more about mentorship opportunities on September 8th, too.

As soon as students land here in New York, they immediately start thinking about internships. Professor Lauraberth Lima will plan to lead an Internship Orientation for all of our incoming First Year Students on Saturday, October 7 via Zoom. Students interested in modern art and/or museum education should consider spending one Saturday a month at the Museum of Modern Art, an invaluable experience developed for our grad students that will give NYU Museum Studies students front-line interactions with audiences and museum staff. For those interested in archives, we will host Education and Outreach Specialist Liyah Desher from the Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services for New York (DHPSNY) to talk about the organization’s free professional development workshops in archives and preservation on October 26. 

Meanwhile, there are also so many other ways to get involved with some of the incredible museums here in our city. Our students are invited to participate in a day-long “behind-the-scenes” workshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as they prepare with four other museums for forthcoming Picasso shows here in the city on Wednesday, November 15 (RSVP here), and a private tour of the upcoming Warhol x Basquiat show at the East Village’s Brandt Foundation on Tuesday, November 28 (RSVP here). The Museum Studies Student Organization has planned even more fun events and we also will have plenty of professional development workshops coming up in the months ahead, so please keep reading the pages ahead and mark your calendars!

Lastly, a few other resources for you as you begin the fall semester. As many of you are seeking museum careers, be sure to subscribe to our Program’s job listings that will hit your inbox every Friday afternoon, and set yourself reminders to proactively look at the classifieds over at AAM’s Job HQ, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) for art-based internship and job postings around New York City and beyond, too.  

Wishing everyone a restful weekend and a wonderful start to the school year ahead.

Sincerely,
Rosanna

Matthew Israel

Image Description: Jenn Neptune (Penobscot) in Awasəwehlαwə́lətinα wikəwαmok – They Returned Home (Penobscot Nation and Local Contexts 2023)

Dr. Miriam Basilio

Image Description: White flier with text. Image shows a group of museum professionals looking at objects in a glass case. Text reads "Interactive Museum Tours. A guide to in-person and virtual experiences. Sharon Vatsky."

Sharon Vatsky is delighted to announce that her new book Interactive Museum Tours: A Guide to In-Person and Virtual Experiences is now available. The book considers the entire tour experience including planning, facilitation, and reflection and suggests strategies for the educator who wants to lead inquiries that encourage participants to make personal connections with works of art.
It also includes chapters written by colleagues that have deep expertise in working with specific audiences.  They share how museum experiences can be adjusted to support positive outcomes. These chapters include:
·        Family learning (Emily Rivlin-Nadler)
·        School tours (Queena Ko)
·        Social and emotional learning (Lisa Mazzola)
·        Students on the autism spectrum (Melanie Adsit and Jackie Delamatre)
·        Adults with low vision and blindness (Karen Bergman) and
·        Adults with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias (Francesca Rosenberg)
If you are interested in adding the book to your library, you can find it on Amazon.com and other online booksellers. A promotional code for a 30% discount when you order through the publisher is available. Contact Charlie Maliha for more information about the discount code and book information flier. 

Matthew Israel

Image Description: Photo of Matthew Israel. He has short side-slicked hair, fair skin, and is wearing a black button-up shirt. Matthew is facing the camera and standinf against a backdrop of green leaves. 

Matthew Israel is pleased to announce that his new book A Year in the Art World  will be available September 19, 2023. Below is a short blurb of this much-anticipated book:

An insider’s detailed chronicle of the inner workings of the contemporary art world, now in paperback.

Over the last few decades, the contemporary art world has become increasingly globalized and more visible than ever before. And yet, in many ways it remains closed and obscure. What actually happens behind the doors of a contemporary artist’s studio? At an auction house before a major sale? In the vaults of an art storage unit? How can art museums keep up with Instagram? And why does everyone seem to hate art fairs?

Join curator, writer, and art historian Matthew Israel on a yearlong journey through the contemporary art world. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong via Venice, Basel, Paris, and New York, from biennials in summer to auction houses in fall, Israel reveals the joys and anxieties of this sometimes baffling, often intimidating field. Blending an insider’s knowledge with in-depth profiles, interviews with key art world figures, and a keen ear for an anecdote, A Year in the Art World is a compelling, generous companion for any art lover curious about how art is being made, valued, sold, cared for, and looked at today