Conference: The College Museum

The College Museum: A Collision of Disciplines, A Laboratory of Perception

April 7 & 8, 2006
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY

Link: View Conference Transcripts

The College Museum: A Collision of Disciplines, A Laboratory of Perception brought together museum professionals, artists, scholar\teachers, and students from across the country to discuss the future of college museums.

Of central importance to the workshops, dialogues, and panel discussions was the recognition that college museums are in transition. With developing pressures to demonstrate how they support the central missions of their educational institutions, college museums are reassessing their engagement with their varied audiences. While every museum will forge its own path into the future, the conference revealed that college museums are looking to one another in this process.

Emphasizing the need to build a framework for continued communication, conference conversations explored common issues currently informing college museums. These issues included:

• Exhibition strategies that will support engaged inquiry. Susan Schwartenberg and Sharon Macdonald encouraged college museums to explore new exhibition strategies and modes of display. Participants in the “Faculty as Curators” workshop shared their experiences with involving faculty in the process of developing exhibition strategies.

• Approaches for developing in college faculty and students the skill sets necessary for claiming ownership in what is happening in the museum. Janet Marstine spoke to this from a broad theoretical perspective. Jill Sweet addressed this through a study of her own experience organizing an exhibition and teaching with it after it was no longer on view. Participants in the “Teaching with the Museum” workshop shared approaches they have utilized in their institutions.

• The need for college museums to look beyond disciplinary boundaries. Ivan Karp suggested that college museums develop in their students a language for responding to different types of museums. He urged college museums to integrate and learn from various exhibition genres.

• Models for museums that will create new forms of viewer engagement. Elaine Heumann Gurian presented a model for a museum influenced by the process of using the internet. This model would engage viewers in open collections display and object research.

• Strategies for connecting with a diverse set of communities and the potential pitfalls that may arise. Through a case study of the UCLA Fowler Museum, Doran Ross presented exhibition strategies to consider. In a case study of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Chris Steiner explored some of the potential pitfalls.

• Methods for museum professionals to resolve the new tensions and demands that result from the college museum in transition. Jock Reynolds spoke about his experiences with the Yale University Art Gallery and encouraged conference participants to share their experiences with these concerns.

Presenters included Fred Wilson, Christopher Steiner, Sharon Macdonald, Janet Marstine, Susan Schwartzenberg, Elaine Heumann Gurian, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Adam Weinberg, John Weber, Doran Ross, Lisa Corrin, Ivan Karp, and Jock Reynolds.

Sponsored by the Henry R. Luce Foundation, the Michele A. Dunkerley Dialogue Series, Skidmore College, and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.