Does the museum change or does our perception of the museum change? Transforming the organizational landscape of museums through collaboration
Dr. Susan McCullough, Program Director of Art Education at Queens College of the City University of New York and Maria Pio, Director of Education and Administration at Godwin-Ternbach Museum
In this paper, we share our experiences in a collaboration between the Queens College Art Education program and the Queens College campus art museum, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. We discuss the possibilities for subverting the white dominant paradigm in museums by sharing museum pedagogy with classroom teachers and providing them with tools most often employed by museum educators to allow them to engage with and critique the museum. This collaboration takes the form of a graduate course for art education and social studies education students working in conjunction with the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. The title of this piece was inspired by a curriculum guide to the Godwin-Ternbach’s collection created by an art education graduate student, Jocelyn Worrall. Her guide compared maps from different times and posed the question, “Does the world change or does our perception of the world change?” This question was our guidepost as we considered the role museum educators play in presenting an evolving version of museums to visitors.
Sense of belonging in the museum
From experience, we know that many students who visit our campus museum for the first time feel a sense of intimidation as they walk through the doors. We often ask why they feel that way and their response is almost always that they feel like they do not belong, or that they do not know enough about what is on view to be able to find meaning in their visit. As museum educators, we feel responsible for dismantling those beliefs and empowering our students and visitors to feel welcomed and more importantly to feel a sense of belonging. Our work as museum educators is to not only teach within the museum’s exhibition and collections, but also to allow room for conversation and discussion about what we see and how we relate to the art/objects on view. Likewise, museum educators can encourage visitors to think more broadly about the structure of the museum: “the primary goal is to enable audiences to make sense of the artwork — to understand how it fits into the museum and their own lives. In progressive museum education today, this also entails questioning systems of power at play within and surrounding the artwork” (McCullough, Du & Dewhurst, 2018, p. 36). By encouraging visitors to have this approach to a museum, we are slowly changing the narrative between the hierarchical structures that prevent other voices from having a seat at the table.
Sharing museum pedagogy with classroom teachers
When working with in-service and pre-service teachers one of the most important things we do as museum educators is to promote a sense of autonomy that allows them to become familiarized with the museum, its collection, and programs. We strive to model ways of engagement with the objects and promote close looking and inquiry that they can apply to their teaching both in the classroom and at the museum. Topics discussed during museum visits goes beyond just working with the objects. Museum educators and classroom teachers discuss museums in general and issues facing institutions dealing with questions of provenance, funding/donors, accessibility, and deconstructing preconceived ideas of what museums are, who they are for, and their role in society. Classroom teachers can share this knowledge with their students, deconstructing preconceived ideas of museums so students learn to question the role of the museum in society. This requires them to think critically about museum structures, with the goal of making the museum a familiar and comfortable environment for everyone. Honest conversations about these structures will encourage classroom teachers to promote a more equitable environment for their students and in doing so, help promote change from the outside in.
The Challenge to Change
Museums, for many reasons, are challenged to change. As artist and educator Pablo Helguera notes “museums, as the historical institutions they are, have difficulties adjusting to new times” (2021, unpaginated). Visitors may believe however, that museums are changing because they offer us the perception of change through the work of museum educators. Through programming, interpretive tools and outreach, museum educators create opportunities for access, to build and diversify audiences, and for critiquing the current museum structure and practices. Museum educators act as agents of change within the institution creating an alternate reality in which traditional paradigms can be challenged.
A traditional organizational chart is a top-down categorization of who is in charge and where decisions are ultimately made for an organization no matter the size. Traditional museum structures are ingrained with this top-down organizational structures that rely on hierarchies, and leave no room for other voices and collaboration.These types of structures rely on “territorial thinking, defined protocols, and traditional reporting structures based on academic degrees, power, silos, division, and oppression” (Murawski, 2018, unpaginated). Within these structures, there is a silent hierarchy between departments that stresses the importance or esteem of one department over the other. The work that an education department does is essential to the understanding of exhibitions and collections, and promotes a visitor-centered approach that can empower individuals at different levels of an organization and beyond.
The Possibility of Interdisciplinary Collaboration
At Queens College we explore this possibility through a collaborative course on museum pedagogy that brings together graduate students from the Art Education and Social Studies Education programs who are in-service teachers and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. This course engages these students with inquiry-based, student-centered, and image and object-based pedagogy giving them the tools to engage with the museum and its collections like museum educators. Students learn, not only how to access and interact with objects and images, but to ask critical questions about the museum’s role in history and society, provenance of objects, and the role of donors and patrons. In their coursework students are asked to consider the most compelling way to use the collections to make connections with their own students and their school communities. The learning goals for the course are stated as:
- to learn about the role of visual images and material culture in the study of history and the role of history in the study of art;
- how to visually analyze an image or object;
- how to facilitate an inquiry-based discussion about an image incorporating historical and contextual information, and how artists incorporate community issues and concerns into a social practice of making art.
The course is divided into several different sections. Students begin the course by thinking about the reframing of history and art and how social studies teachers and art teachers might work interdisciplinarily. A video of the artist Fred Wilson talking about his groundbreaking 1992 exhibition Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore is used as a catalyst for conversation on the first day to introduce critical themes around the role curation and interpretation plays in visitors’ understanding of the museum’s collection. Desai, Hamlin, and Mattson (2010), describe the exhibition’s impact in this way: “Wilson repositioned select objects from the archives of the Maryland Historical Society to provoke difficult questions about the histories that these objects embody, and the purpose of the institutions that preserve them” ( p. 3). Most students are not familiar with this exhibition and, though it is 30 years old, the ideas about race and historical interpretation through objects still resonate. Students are often surprised by the realization that Wilson’s critique of the institution was accomplished simply by the choice and placement of objects.
Students are also introduced to Social Practice Art. Queens College is unique in that it offers a graduate certificate in Social Practice Art. This program has recently expanded to a City University of New York (CUNY) initiative. Social Practice Art can be defined in many ways but in the course we emphasize that it is an artistic practice in which the artist engages with viewers in a specific community. Students read essays and lesson plans from Art as Social Action edited by Queens College professors Chloë Bass and Gregory Sholette. As part of developing their understanding of the museum as an institution, students learn that in social practice art, a variety of public spaces can be activated to serve purposes that are similar to the museum. For example, students watch a video produced by the Studio Museum in Harlem on Chloë Bass’s installation Wayfinding in which she has created an artistic intervention in St. Nicholas Park in Harlem. For their final projects, students are encouraged to create a unit plan or project in which they use visual art to engage students with their school community. Through discussions both in the classroom and in the museum space, we often encourage students to think beyond the physical museum space in order to find meaning and connections to the visual arts. The idea that art and history are intertwined is not just something we are constantly thinking about, but something we are actively uncovering and encouraging our students and visitors to also think about and explore further within their own communities.
For their final projects, students in the course tapped into that potential with their own students. Some examples of this work include a unit in which 5th graders in Long Island, New York learn that their town was a site of the Culper Spy Ring, a group of rebel colonists working to subvert British rule. The rebels used a variety of secret messaging techniques to communicate which their art teacher, a student in the collaborative course, related to how artists can communicate using symbols and abstract art. Students learned to consider their whole town as a historical site and the potential in every object for visual communication.
Fig. 2 and Fig. 3: Two images of a student’s final presentation slides.
In another example, high school students in East Harlem, New York were made aware of the content on the many murals dedicated to people that they see in their school neighborhood. Their teacher learned who was represented in each mural and their story, and engaged the students in a unit which asked the question “who is a hero?” connecting historical heroes with contemporary and local ones.
Two images of a student’s final presentation slide.
Through both of these units of study, students learn that their school communities can be considered sites as rich in history and art as museums.
Likewise, when classroom teachers create museum-based curricular guides in collaboration with museum staff and college faculty, they develop a new perspective on museums, collections, and education. Recently, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum had the opportunity to partner with faculty in art education and social studies education programs at the college to create a fellowship for creating curricular guides based on the museum’s collection and objects from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources.** This opportunity was unique because an art classroom teacher was selected as a museum fellow to create these guides. During the six-month fellowship, the teacher was fully supported by interdisciplinary staff in creating these resources. The process of planning, researching, and prototyping/creating opened up opportunities for discussions far beyond those relating to the collection and pedagogy.
The fellow had a unique opportunity to work closely with the museum’s collection and think of ways in which the collection and the museum could be presented to students and other teachers. One of the questions that we grappled with was, how to ensure that there is enough flexibility within the lessons to allow for teachers and students to not only learn from but also create meaning and connection with the objects and the museum itself. Instead of having one authoritative voice, which museums often do, why not collectively allow for other ways of interpretation and discussion? Gaining a better understanding of the intricacies of museum work, the fellow, along with museum staff, were able to exchange ideas on how to best advocate for change within museums and dismantle barriers of engagement and understanding for their students. This powerful collaboration is essential to bringing other voices into the conversation, creating familiarity, and establishing a safe space for all learners and museum-goers.
A Changing Landscape for Museums
We believe that by sharing the pedagogy and process of museum education with classroom teachers, we can expand on museum educators' work to challenge the dominant paradigms in museums. As we reflect on this interdisciplinary collaboration, we can see the impact that museum educators can have on teachers and their students. After the course and visit to the museum, teachers (pre and in-service) become more comfortable in navigating conversations within museums and guiding their students to think of museums not as boring and intimidating spaces but rather as vibrant, honest, and inclusive spaces where they can feel comfortable sharing ideas and learning from the art and each other. One of the things we always remind our visitors (students/teachers/public) is that you do not need to know everything about the museum and its objects to be able to appreciate the experience. Each individual brings their own experiences to relate, question, and enjoy their visit. This slight shift in the way we think about museums gives the authority to the individual visitor rather than placing it on the institution itself. Museums may be slow to change, but this practice encourages the perception of the museum to be changed by and for visitors.
* The fellowship was funded by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Resources grant.
Susan McCullough (she/her) is an Assistant Professor and Program Director for Art Education at Queens College, CUNY. She has worked in museum education at various museums in New York City including the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Whitney Museum of American Art for 20 years.
Maria C. Pio (she/her) is the co-director, Director of Education and Administration at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College, CUNY. Prior to her role at GTM, she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 7 years in the Visitor Services and Education departments.
Citations
Desai, D., Hamlin, J. & Mattson, R. (2010). History as Art, Art as History. Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education. Routledge: New York.
Helguera, P. (2021, June 25). Letter to a Future Arts Educator. Pablo Helguera.net. http://pablohelguera.net/2021/06/letter-to-a-future-arts-educator-2021/
McCullough, S., Du, J. & Dewhurst, M. (2018). Engaging Audiences, Building Community, Challenging Power: Museum Education and Public Art. In C.K. Knight & H. Senie (Eds.), Museums and Public Art?(pp. 28–40). Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne.
Murawski, M. (2018, January 22). Towards a More Human-Centered Museum: Part 1, Rethinking Hierarchies. Art Museum Teaching. https://artmuseumteaching.com/2018/01/22/rethinking-hierarchies/#comments
