Exhibition in Practice: A Perspective from the Classroom

How do we give students hands-on experiences that help them see beyond the opaque aspects of museum work in a single quarter, semester, or summer when in-depth exhibition development so often takes years? How can we take students through the full lifecycle of an exhibition? This presentation closely examines the case study of a two-quarter class that illuminated dimensions of curatorial practice by prompting students to conceptualize, design, install, and program an exhibition at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. In laying the groundwork for students to hit the ground running, we delved into the Smart’s permanent collection asking questions about how we organize our database. We reached out to private collectors and galleries, and encouraged collaboration through digital learning platforms. In the process of modeling the inherently collaborative aspects of museum work for students and seeking ways to pursue their ambitious ideas in a tight timeframe, we have come to think about our collection and our museum’s mission in new ways.