Partnering with Museums for a Socially Responsible Art History

Museums and universities have natural connections. Yet collaborations between them tend to segregate each partner to their traditional sphere of activity. What are the benefits, and where are the friction points, of blurring and overlapping the distinctive roles of the museum and university? This lightning talk shares outcomes from courses taught in partnership with a local public art museum commenting on the implications of such collaborations for learning goals, faculty position, museum outcomes and infrastructure.

When the academic classroom engages more robustly with the museum and its public audiences, students confront the history of art-history, and must articulate and navigate ethical responsibilities for academic work. Transforming the classroom into a collaborative, community-based learning space repositions faculty, museum, and community stakeholders as co-creators of the classroom and its outcomes, requiring more time and effort for everyone involved. This has implications for both museums and universities in terms of the infrastructure needed to support such activities while bringing significant rewards. Engaging critically with the museum and its work helps dislodge students' sense that the museum and art-history's disciplinary narratives possess neutrality and inevitability. Students must consider the impact of their research on the world outside the classroom, and navigate the potential conflict between their visions for their work and the perspectives and needs of other stakeholders. Similarly, faculty and museum staff engage in real-time with the multiple perspectives and voices of undergraduates of diverse social identities and disciplinary backgrounds, broadening academic and museum work that make it intellectually rigorous and socially engaged.