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New Modes of Learning Yield Big Results

In an average year, Chief Curator Anne Rose Kitagawa gives dozens of class tours, co-teaches with Art history faculty, presents to students, and leads class assignments and object-viewings for classes in the museum featuring Asian Art. In the mostly virtual 2020-2021 academic year, Anne Rose Kitagawa adapted existing resources and learned new technologies to support faculty and to make the JSMA’s collections and exhibitions available for learning. This resulted in several tours, 15 presentations to students, 10 class assignments in response to digital assets, and multiple virtual object viewings. A reported 740 students engaged with the art of China, Japan, and Korea as a result!

Faculty Engagement

The newly formed Faculty Engagement Working Group (FEWG) allowed the JSMA to promote regular dialogue between faculty and museum staff during the pandemic. Its purpose is to foster new and innovative faculty and student use of the museum in teaching and research. The FEWG meets three times during the academic year, with presentations from museum staff about upcoming exhibitions, special projects of potential interest, and updates on how to access JSMA collections and exhibitions for object-based teaching. Additionally, these group meetings offer faculty an opportunity to discuss their research and teaching and brainstorm ideas for new collaborations with museum staff and other faculty. Paul Peppis, professor in the Department of English, director of the Oregon Humanities Center, and a member of the JSMA’s Leadership Council, chairs the group, with twelve members total. The FEWG met in December 2020 and March 2021, and additional side meetings occurred between members and their colleagues.

To say the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art has enriched my college experience would be an understatement. I have found a community of individuals whom I regard as family. The staff at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art have given me the support and confidence to pursue opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of taking. They have cheered me

Student Engagement

In addition to supporting academic engagement with the JSMA’s collections and exhibitions, the JSMA supports UO students’ individual educational journeys through student employment and internships at the museum.

The JSMA employs an average of 50 students annually in various positions and internships in communications, curatorial and collections, education, visitor services, gallery monitoring, event support, and more. As a whole, JSMA student workers speak more than 10 languages, represent many countries and cultures, and contribute their time and talent to countless museum initiatives, programs, and departments. JSMA student workers tell us that working in the museum contributes to their career goals, enriches their personal interests, and connects them to like-minded art enthusiasts.

When the museum closed in March of 2020, the JSMA sought to offer student workers opportunities to work remotely, recognizing that students drive our mission and inspire us as an academic museum. By April 2020, we launched Museum Students/Museum Stories (MS/MS), a new program to keep student workers employed while the museum was closed. They wrote and made digital content for our website and social media messaging, telling their stories about their work at the museum, how it impacts their career plans, insights, and more. They also researched what other academic museums were creating in that time of sheltering at home, scouring hundreds of university museum websites for intriguing new models of online art learning.

The JSMA thanks Norm Brown and Anne Cooling for making paid student opportunities possible at the JSMA through the Anne Cooling Student Impact Fund, which was created to support student employment and academic internships at the JSMA.