MONDAY
Museums and Political Conflict
MSMS-GA 2226-001, Class # 3339 (4 Points)
Jeffrey Feldman
Monday, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
In contemporary Museum Studies, it is often said that museums are inherently political institutions. But how do politics actually happen in museums? What has "politics" meant for key exhibitions and collections and what avenues of political theory emerge from the museum in general? In this seminar, we will move beyond the general to examine how specific political concepts took shape in historic exhibitions and museum practices from the 1930s to the present. As such, our challenge will be twofold. On the one hand, we will consider how political movements have used the museums as an implement for advancing power and influence. On the other hand, we will consider how museum practices have "taken up" various kinds of politics: how museum objects and officials have engaged and advocated the agendas and outcomes of political parties, governments, policies, revolutions, and elections. Case studies will include: Degenerate Art (1937), Paris World Exhibition (1937), Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads" (1934), The Guggenheim Museum (1959), Yad Vashem (1965), Harlem on my Mind (1969), The Perfect Moment (1990), The Last Act (1994), The Jewish Museum of Bologna (1998), Sensation (1999), The Apartheid Museum (2001), Holocaust Cartoons (2006), among others. Through these case studies, students will examine the museum's role in the public sphere and the process whereby exhibitions contribute to-- or undermined--key aspects of deliberative democracy.
Museum Career Lab
MSMS-GA 3990-002, Class # 22488 (2 Points)
Ruth Starr
Monday (every 2 weeks), 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Navigating the museum field as an emerging professional requires self-advocacy, communication, and an adept understanding of how to leverage a personal network and create a personal brand as a pathway towards career opportunities. Museum Career Lab is a space for cultivating these skills and having honest conversations about challenges we may experience as we develop in our work. Students will learn strategies for communicating in a variety of potentially complicated situations, establish professional goals, and will discuss core concepts involved in the practice of being “at work” in museums including institutional culture, politics and processes. Further, students will develop a foundational set of skills that have broad application across museums such as project management, evaluation methods, budget administration, and communication. Through these cross-functional topics, we build a robust “toolbox” equipping students to bring interdisciplinary skill sets in their chosen area of interest meeting the needs of today’s museum.
This course is intended to best serve the needs of students at this pivotal point of their academic and professional career. Course topics are included that parallel experience gained during internships, with ample opportunity for students to co-create class sessions based on needs and interests. Class meetings will range in formats from group discussions, guest speakers, and individual meetings. Museum Career Lab, like the practice of museums, is emerging and evolving in real-time as the field responds to a changing landscape and is designed to meet the needs of students in the lab. Students will be involved in shaping topics and encouraged to collaborate to format our class meetings collectively. Completion of this course will result in development of a range of skill sets that broadly benefit contemporary museum practice.
TUESDAY
Heritage, Memory and Negotiating Temporalities
MSMS-GA 2229-001, Class # 21538 (4 Points)
Jane Anderson
Tuesday, 9:15 a.m. - 12.15 p.m.
What is heritage, how is it produced and to what extent does it (re)arrange relationships between time, memory and identity? How do some heritages come to be memorialized and institutionalized and others excluded and rendered peripheral? This seminar will cover the historical development of the concept of heritage as well as exploring the genesis of international heritage administration, charters, conventions, and national heritage laws. It will highlight emerging trends and practices including exploring the concept of “social memory” and contrast it with the more formalized techniques of heritage didactics and curation. We will explore the increasing interest in “bottom-up” heritage programming that directly involves the general public in the formulation, collection, and public presentation of historical themes and subjects as an ongoing social activity. Case studies from different regions and social contexts will be explored: “conflicted heritage,” “minority heritage,” “indigenous heritage,” “diasporic heritage,” “sites of conscience,” long-term community planning and involvement in “eco-museums”, the relationship between heritage, development and tourism and public heritage interpretation centers. Students will be asked to address specific problems in sites or organizations presented during the course and will formulate socio-interpretive assessments of projects or research of their choosing in the U.S. or abroad.
Topics in Museum Studies: Collecting and Exhibiting Latin American and Latinx Art in the US
MSMS-GA 3330-005, Class # 3342 (4 Points)
Miriam Basilio
Tuesday, 1 pm - 4 pm
Museums throughout the US have recently taken an interest in Latin American and, to a lesser extent, Latinx art, including new museum appointments of curators specializing in this area. While the field slowly evolves, a shared understanding of past efforts and controversies is necessary to move forward. The class will be organized chronologically, beginning in the 1930s with discussion of case studies that outline landmark exhibitions and collecting. Class participants are also encouraged to bring in examples of interest to them to share with the class. The impact of political events such as the Good Neighbor Policy, the Cold War, and the Culture Wars will be integral to discussions. Other important points of reference will be the 1980s-1990s debates about multiculturalism that prefigure current events today. Throughout the course, consideration of African American and Asian American art case studies will be used in class sessions to compare the representation of artists in museums.
Readings will include archival material, exhibition catalog essays, academic books and articles, and exhibition reviews. Students will have a choice of final assignments. In addition to a final presentation (length depends on the number of people in the class), students may choose to write a short 10–15-page paper on a case study; draft an exhibition or acquisition proposal for a museum; or select another creative project to be discussed with the professor.
Museum Management
MSMS-GA 1502-001, Class # 2840 (4 Points)
Helen Warwick
Tuesday, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
This core course provides an overview of the management capabilities required, and the core management tools used, in today's museums. During the course we will also review current issues in museums and have the opportunity to discuss our views on the leadership and management shown in addressing these issues.
Participants will be introduced to a range of museum professionals and be asked to complete individual and group assignments that will prepare them for understanding museum management challenges. There will be the opportunity to understand the importance of:
● understanding and responding to current issues
● determining mission and vision
● strategic planning
● budgeting and financial management
● planning a mission-aligned program and collection
● planning marketing and communications
● achieving sustainability
● creating museums that have staff and volunteer people resources, collections and infrastructures that their communities need
Collectively we will gain an understanding of the practical strategies that create and maintain well-run museums that are meaningful to their publics and the field.
WEDNESDAY
Topics in Museum Studies: Critical Collections: On the Ethics and Identities of Things
MSMS-GA 3330-006, Class # 21536 (4 Points)
Marisa Karyl Franz
Wednesday, 1:45 pm - 4.45 pm
Museum collections are often filled with objects, specimens, artworks, and material culture. However, the nature of these things can challenge us as museum professionals to shift our practice, our understanding, and our relationship with the material things around us. This class asks us to consider the diversity of materials in museum collections to destabilize our notions of what things are and how we relate to them. This class will consider a number of different kinds of things, likely including, but not limited to living beings, radioactive land, 3D printed artifacts, decaying matter, and everyday consumer goods from a variety of museum collections and heritage sites around the world to address issues of care, classification, access, accountability, and value. The readings will draw from Indigenous and non-Indigenous ontologies (philosophies of being and existence) as well as decolonial and postcolonial scholarship to consider alternative approaches to the material and natural world and how our practice can be informed and challenged by them. The class will have several visits to museums and exhibitions in the city and guest lectures throughout the semester. Students will have the opportunity to pursue their own research interests in a final paper or project and are encouraged to consider both conceptual and practical topics in their work.
Topics in Museum Studies: Museum Activism
MSMS-GA 3330-004, Class # 2841 (4 Points)
Camille-Mary Sharp
Wednesday, 5 pm - 8 pm
“Museum Activism” explores the relation between museums and activism by positioning cultural institutions as sites of constant change, negotiation, and struggle. Recognizing that museum practice emerges out of distinct social and political contexts, this course follows critical social movements – such as labor and racial and climate justice – as they relate to museums and ultimately shape museum practice. Focusing on various cases of advocacy, protest, and museum reform since the early twentieth century, the course demonstrates that critical and socially engaged practice is not new, but foundational to the modern museum. We will pursue such questions as: what is “museum activism” and what forms (grassroots, institutional, academic) can it take? How have communities used museums and their practices to push for social change? And how have artists, activists, and cultural workers disrupted cultural institutions and their processes?
Museum and the Law
MSMS-GA 2220-001, Class # 3340 (4 Points)
Hima Gleason
Wednesday, 5 pm - 8 pm
Legal issues pervade so many aspects of the world of museums. The law can both constrain and enable the behavior of museum staff, administration, and others who work with these cultural organizations. Therefore, it is difficult to work in, for and with museums without some training in or familiarity with the law. In this course, we will examine how museums are affected by a variety of legal regulations, including cultural heritage legislation, intellectual property issues, such as copyright, trademark and moral rights, first amendment and censorship claims, work-place hazards, contracts, and nonprofit and tax laws, such as valuation, charitable transfers, payments in lieu of taxes and the unrelated business income tax. Readings will consist of case law and secondary sources detailing the most pressing legal issues facing different types of museums, and group discussions will be supplemented by mock case studies and negotiation exercises.
THURSDAY
Topics in Museum Studies: Religion, Magic, Science, & the Museum
MSMS-GA 3330-002, Class # 3347 (4 Points)
Marisa Karyl Franz
Thursday, 1:45 pm - 4:45 pm
This course looks at museums and their collections of religious, spiritual, scientific, and magical materials. Throughout, we are asked to consider how these categories are used within museums to create boundaries, invite engagement, and reflect colonial legacies of knowledge production. We will explore different areas of museum practice including collections, conservation, cataloging, and curation. Students will have the opportunity to read works from religious studies and anthropology to build up an intellectual history of how and why we name certain things magical or religious, sacred or scientific, icons or idols. The course will look at how museums deal with ritual practices, hauntings, and immortality. Throughout, we will consider a diverse selection of case studies to explore how different museums and cultural sites are caring for religious, spiritual, and magical materials and what is at stake in our identifications of what these things are. We will visit museums, heritage sites, and religious institutions to see how different sites engage with these materials.
Topics in Museum Studies: Ethical Frameworks for Museum Work
MSMS-GA 3330-003, Class # 3712 (4 Points)
Lauraberth Lima
Thursday, 1:45 pm - 4:45 pm
The moral principles, values, and standards that Museums adopt play a significant role in institutional practices. This course explores the origins of museum ethics, universal standards, legal and cultural implications, as well as the impact that these practices make on audiences, collections, and staff. Students will consider how museums develop codes of ethics and the processes through which those codes succeed or fail to be implemented in practice beyond institutional mission statements. Ethical frameworks will be explored through historic and contemporary texts as well as through case studies. Students will examine the distinctions between frameworks that elicit public confidence and those that elicit distrust. This class will also explore widely adopted shifts in ethical frameworks that have changed with popular attitudes throughout time. In final projects, students will conduct independent research on specific topics such as object acquisition, cultural narratives and depictions in exhibitions, and internal professional practices.
Topics in Museum Studies: Digital Frictions
MSMS-GA 3330-001, Class # 2842 (4 Points)
Rosanna Flouty
Thursday, 5 pm - 8 pm
This class examines the potential for museums to embrace multimodal ways to make experiences and collections accessible through digital design and new technologies. At least one class will be co-facilitated with NYU’s Ability Lab, an interdisciplinary research space dedicated to the intersection between disability and technology located at NYU’s Tandon campus. Students will learn about accessible alternative formats, sonification, haptic technologies, and the creation of visual descriptions supported by open-source, cloud-hosted toolkits. We will also examine both strategies and failures employed by museums to design for individuals with diverse motor, cognitive, sensory, and behavior-emotional abilities. After developing a project idea and design brief in groups, students will partner with Computer Science to build digital prototypes.
FRIDAY
Conservation and Collections Management
MSMS-GA 2222-001, Class # 3094 (4 Points)
Jakki Godfrey & Lisa Bruno
Friday, 9:15 am - 12:15 pm
As an introduction to museum conservation and collections management, this seminar combines readings, discussions, research, field trips, and practical exercises to provide an understanding of the material concerns and underlying values that drive collections care decisions. It is designed to give students the tools to think critically about collections management and conservation processes. The seminar covers many core functions of museum practice, from acquisition, exhibition, and storage to emergency planning and response. It includes topics in conservation such as examination, conservation science and technical art history as well as preventive conservation measures to manage the museum environment. The seminar also addresses legal and ethical considerations in museum stewardship. Course readings cover the historical and philosophical values that shape the field of conservation, and technical information needed to make conservation and collections management decisions. Students perform readings, discussion, practical and theoretical exercises, short writing assignments and conduct research leading to a term paper.
Exhibition Planning and Design
MSMS-GA 3332-001, Class # 2843 (4 Points)
Ian Kerrigan
Friday, 1 pm - 4 pm
This course focuses on the planning, development, and design of permanent, temporary, and traveling exhibitions. It is a participatory class where students learn basic exhibition interpretation and design techniques including goal setting and scriptwriting, spatial layouts and the use of graphics, colors and materials, audiovisuals and lighting, and fabrication and installation methods. Students gain insight into exhibition planning and the roles played by various museum professionals at different stages of development. There are visits with designers and planners to discuss their work and to museums and other venues to analyze exhibition design in the field. Individual student projects provide hands-on experience.
OTHER
Internship
MSMS-GA 3990-001, Class # 21537 (2 Points)
Lauraberth Lima
M.A. and Advanced Certificate students spend a minimum of 300 hours over one or more semesters in a project-oriented internship at a museum or other suitable institution. Students nearing completion of course prerequisites (MSMS-GA 1500, MSMS-GA 1501, and MSMS-GA 1502) must schedule a planning meeting with the Program's Internship Coordinator. A daily log, evaluations, and progress report are required. Students must earn a grade of B or better to receive the M.A. or Advanced Certificate. Further information is available in the Internship Guidelines Packet.
Research in Museum Studies
MSMS-GA 3991-001, Class # 2844 (1-4 Points)
Rosanna Flouty
Independent research on a topic determined in consultation with the program director.
CROSS-LISTED COURSES
Approaches to Public History
MSMS-GA 1757-001, Class # 3377 (4 Points)
Ellen Noonan
Tuesday, 4:55 pm - 7:35 pm