Visual Arts and Museums I

Catalog description

Today art museums across the globe are undergoing massive shifts both inside and out. Students enroll in this course and its partner course to gain fluency in the theoretical, historical, practical, and contemporary issues central to art museums, the field of museum studies/museology, and to careers in museums today. Together these two courses trace the development and evolution of art museums (with focus on global and encyclopedic collections) in Western Europe and the United States. We grant particular focus to collecting practices, exhibition strategies and curating, as well as governance and audience engagement. We begin by analyzing the historic development of the art museum and museal spaces more broadly, tracing these roots to the contemporary identity of art museums today. Investigating how and why so many museums are actively restructuring, self-evaluating, and seeking to become more transparent, we examine the museum as steward of cultural heritage and as an active catalyst within different communities. In tandem, students will be introduced to how museums acquire, house, manage, preserve, display, and interpret their collections. We investigate the museum as a site for learning, research, and scholarship, as well as the relationship between diverse publics and the leadership of museums historically and today. Students will learn directly from museum professionals to consider historical, social, cultural, and political frameworks through a series of questions and investigations: Who built museums and why? Who works there, and who visits? What does the museum system look like and how do its parts interact? What kinds of relationships exist between people and things we collect, and between institutions, audiences, and objects of art? What do museum colleagues in various departments do, and why is it important to understand these roles? What does it mean to curate exhibitions and how does curatorial practice continue to change and evolve? What ethical and legal considerations are at stake? Part A of this sequence concentrates on museum collections and related aspects of care, research, interpretation and scholarship. We often visit with museum professionals at the CMA and other UCI institutions. Students who successfully complete graduate sections ARTH 490A and ARTH 490B may be considered for admission into ARTH 491A , a supervised internship in an art museum or gallery situation. Offered as ARTH 390A and ARTH 490A . Counts as a Disciplinary Communication course. Counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course.