Art, Experience, Community: Learning and Engagement at the Saint Louis Art Museum before and after Ferguson
FIG. 2 Seventh-grade students from Ferguson Middle School collaborating with artists Steven and William Ladd during the Ladds’ Scrollathon programmatic residency at the Saint Louis Art Museum in February 2016
inequality. Quite the contrary. The museum’s collections and exhibitions are powerful vehicles through which contemporary topics are brought to the forefront. As an especially relevant example, in 2016 the museum acquired a series of seven lithographs titled All Hands on Deck (2015) by St. Louis–based artist Damon Davis in response to the events in Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing. Additionally, during her 2014–15 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fellowship with the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University, Mariam Ghani produced a new multimedia work, The City & the City, a fictional narrative that focuses on “border zones” in St. Louis that are the result of deindustrialization and population shifts. The work was shown as part of the exhibition Currents 110: Mariam Ghani at the museum that culminated her fellowship, and she presented her work in a public lecture and discussion. Just as the approach we took was best suited to our organizational mission and institutional character, the responses from other St. Louis museums and cultural organizations were similarly tailored. For example, the Missouri History Museum, our peer ZMD institution situated across Forest Park, responded very differently yet with similar clarity and integrity to its mission and character. The Missouri History Museum served as a forum for town-hall meetings and other programming in the weeks and months after Michael Brown’s death. This was very much in keeping with its
mission and expertise as an institution focused on connecting the history of Missouri with contemporary issues faced by Missourians. Three years after the events in Ferguson, the museum educator colloquium What We May Be at the Clark Art Institute has helped me to reflect on and unpack my thoughts and actions from that chaotic and confusing period when the world’s attention was focused here. I now recognize that I experienced a healthy degree of uncertainty about whether or not we were taking the right approach. It was healthy in that I did not assume I had all the answers, prompting me to think deeply with others about how to respond in a sincere and productive way as I acted on behalf of the educational mission of my institution. I found that as I leaned into my training and experience as a museum educator, I found confidence in the vulnerability and productivity developed through work with colleagues and collaborators from across the museum and the community. My approach was also context specific, grounded in the mission, vision, and values of the museum and the region’s history and present moment. This work is not quick, neat, or easy, but it is more critical and essential now than ever before. 1 Art, Experience, Community: The Saint Louis Art Museum Strategic Plan, 2015–2019, http://www.slam.org/Files/AboutUs /StrategicPlan2015-2019.pdf. 2 “Aging Successfully in St. Louis County: A Quality of Life Assessment,” St. Louis County Department of Planning, https://www .stlouisco.com/Portals/8/docs/document%20library/AgeFriendly /FINAL_Aging_Successfully_Assessment.pdf
77