Lost then Found: the “Tilley Crucifix” at Colorado College and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (FAC) is a new academic museum. The FAC has served diverse communities in southern Colorado since 1936. In 2016, the FAC entered into an alliance with Colorado College, adding an academic component to its multiple audiences – highlighting both tremendous possibilities for connection and intractable divisions. Within this multi-faceted context, this case study examines a teaching collaboration between the FAC Museum and Colorado College’s undergraduate Museum Studies program. The issues raised by the project include: With limited resources, how can an academic art museum balance a museum’s on-campus role with its community mission? Can it navigate institutional pressure for revenue / impact while also serving students and faculty fully? How should an art museum overcome the communication gap between academic and community audiences around art, art history, and museum practices? The “Tilley Crucifix” project was simultaneously an academic course, an exhibition, a community outreach project, and an investigation into institutional history. Focused on a 19^th-century crucifix made in central Mexico, this PBL course asked students to be art historians, conservators, community organizers, oral historians, legal experts, curators, and museum professionals. They undertook extensive collaborations to expand the frame of knowledge around the Crucifix, including campus and community members and the Colorado Springs Archdiocese. Students navigated competing voices, messages, biases, and histories about the Crucifix – and the museum. Their work illuminates how students can productively engage with – and impact – an academic art museum’s mission, audiences, collection, and ethics.