Exhibitions in Dialogue: A model for enhancing collaboration at Colgate University

This proposal aims to share successes and challenges in implementing a temporary exhibition model at Colgate University that puts exhibitions in dialogue to enhance collaboration with students, faculty, campus partners, and communities.

The strategic plan adopted by the University Museums at Colgate in 2021 calls for the two museums–Picker Art Gallery and Longyear Museum of Anthropology–to work toward developing models for more collaborative exhibitions with partners on- and off-campus. Since the spring of 2022, Picker has mounted two or more concurrent exhibitions that are thematically linked to each other. We have been finding this type of thematic exhibition model particularly useful for connecting our exhibitions to other departments and programming around campus. More importantly, it has been an effective means for cultivating deeper collaborations that leverage a variety of academic, artistic, and community expertise to enhance the quality of the exhibition content and related programs. We are able to offer numerous points of entry to our audiences. The result has been greater integration into the curriculum, and increase in class visits, and well-attended public programs.

Past exhibitions have addressed the colonial lenses that continue to be placed on Indigenous artists in museum and gallery spaces and how legacies of the Atlantic slave trade are are imprinted on the lanscapes of North America and the bodies of its Black inhabitants. Our most recent exhibitions examine the use of popular visual culture such as comic books and pulp illustrations as means of conveying messages about folkloric pasts and utopian futures.