Panel Discussions

Panel Discussion: The Engaged Museum

Does science happen only in the laboratory? Art in the studio? Humanities in the library? On a college campus, how might a museum become a site for the type of “ah hah” experiences usually associated with these other three traditional sites for student learning?

What can college museums learn from how various types of museums -- e.g. science, art, history -- use objects differently and create different sets of expectations, behaviors, and learning modes? Can the college museum foster new forms of cross-disciplinary dialogue?

Can the college museum enhance and expand faculty scholarship?

Janet Marstine, Museum Professions, Seton Hall University
Susan Schwartzenberg, Senior Artist, Exploratorium
Jill Sweet, Anthropology, Skidmore College
Moderator: Lisa Aronson, Art History, Skidmore College

Panel Discussion: Museum and Community

How can college museums more deeply engage communities inside and outside their walls, on or off their campuses?

Can the college museum serve as a site for campus/community dialogue? Are there potential pitfalls and/or inherent conflicts in such a vision?

Should a college museum embrace a fundamentally different set of community roles from those of a traditional urban "downtown" museum? What models of community engagement -- new or old -- should college museums look to as they seek to expand and deepen their audiences?

Elaine Heumann Gurian, Museum Consultant/Advisor
Doran Ross, Director Emeritus of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History
Christopher Steiner, Art History and Museum Studies, Connecticut College
Moderator: Lisa Corrin, Director of the Williams College Museum of Art

Panel Discussion: Transformation in the College Museum

What pedagogies and exhibition strategies can be transformative? How can they move the student/viewer from the position of naïve consumer to critical thinker? In what subsequent contexts will this type of transformative experience play itself out?

What is the measure of a transformative museum experience? How will we know it when we encounter it among our students?

How can a college museum transform itself, moving from one phase to another as it seeks to respond to new demands from its campus and new ideas in the museum field? What institutional stresses accompany such major changes, and how can museum staff deal with them?

Ivan Karp, The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University
Sharon Macdonald, Social Anthropology and Sociology, University of Sheffield
Jock Reynolds, Director of the Yale University Art Gallery
Moderator: Margo Mensing, Studio Art, Skidmore College

PDF: Download and print TCM_Panel_Discussions.pdf