SPACES The newsletter of the University of Michigan Museum Studies Program
No.5, 2008
Our big news this year is that the Museum Studies Program has been given the go ahead to develop an undergraduate minor in museum studies. The new minor will have the same interdisciplinary orientation that has proven so successful with our graduate certificate program. Though the minor will be housed within the College of LS&A, we anticipate it will attract students from across the university here at Michigan. Indeed, we have already had a number of inquiries from students in other colleges. The new program is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009. This will coincide with the LS&A theme semester, “Meaningful Objects: Museums in the Academy”—a constellation of events that will examine issues associated with the past, present and future roles of museums in academic institutions. Much of the activity, however, will be centered on the University of Michigan’s exceptional array of collections and museums. Keep your eyes and ears open for news about events being planned for the semester. Fall 2009 will also be an exciting time as we celebrate the much anticipated re-opening of U-M’s Museum of Art and the Kelsey Museum of Classical Archaeology—both institutions are building beautiful new additions and rethinking their education and research programs.
Visitors at the Detroit Institute of Arts viewing the Diego Rivera mural MSP07 students with Associate Director, Bradley Taylor, in front of the Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
On a related note, we are looking forward to moving into our new quarters in the new Frankel Wing of the U-M Museum of Art next year. The Charles H. Sawyer Center for Museum Studies, named after the founder of the University of Michigan’s Museum Practice Program, will house the primary administrative office for the Museum Studies Program. With the launch of the undergraduate minor, we plan to maintain an office in the Exhibit Museum of Natural History as well. Both these venues will also serve as the primary locations for delivering our courses. Locating the Museum Studies Program in two dynamic museums will offer our students and faculty exceptional opportunities to experience and engage museum life on a daily basis. In the last issue of SPACES I mentioned that one of the objectives that emerged from last year’s program review was a mandate to create an environment that would stimulate research about museums and related institutions. Two initiatives have been established to enhance our research profile. The first is a new scheme that recognizes and supports MSP students whose dissertation research is explicitly situated in or around museums. The Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Museums (FDRM) provides funding to students who have completed the requirements for the Certificate in Museum Studies. The second is a new publication series, the University of Michigan Working Papers in Museum Studies. Selected papers of U-M graduate students and faculty and visiting scholars will be critically reviewed and professionally edited for e-publication. All recipients of the FDRM are required to produce a paper on their research project that will be published in this series. Two papers are already in the pipeline for publication. The first is the lecture delivered by this year’s Whitesell Lecturer and MSP Visiting Scholar, Harold Skramstad; the second is a paper on a new paradigm for the digital museum written by MSP07 student Alice Goff. You’ll note in this issue of SPACES that we are introducing a new section called “Kudos” to highlight the achievements of alums and current students; to complement these newsletter highlights, we’re presenting extensive listings on the MSP website. Also new to our website is an archive of streaming videos of many of the major colloquia, symposia, and lectures that we’ve organized over the last few years. It is quite impressive—check it out! Finally, I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll do so again . . . we’d love to hear from alums of the Museum Practice Program, especially those who are working on interesting projects in the museum field. We’d like to continue to feature alums in future issues of SPACES. Continued thanks for your support of Museum Studies at the University of Michigan.
Newsletter Editor Bradley L. Taylor Newsletter Design Chris VanWyck CiesaDesign Staff Director, Raymond Silverman Associate Director, Bradley L. Taylor Unit Administrator, Nancy Murray Museum Studies Program University of Michigan 4700 Haven Hall 505 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045 Office phone: 734-936-6678 Fax: 734-786-0064 www.umich.edu/~ummsp ummsp@umich.edu Regents of the University of Michigan Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich Rebecca McGowan, Ann Arbor Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor
Ray Silverman Director, Museum Studies Program
Mary Sue Coleman, ex officio
About Our Logo The MSP mark is derived from an ideogram created by the Akan peoples of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The name of the design, nkyinkyin, may be translated “twistings” and embodies ideas of change, resilience, adaptability, and creativity.
A Letter from Los Angeles [Ed.: Each year a number of MSP students scatter to different corners of the world to complete their practicum requirement. Occasionally we like to share news of their work in progress. The following letter comes from MSP06 student Alison Byrnes, a masters graduate of the School of Art + Design at Michigan, who writes to share news of her experience as a Getty Foundation Graduate Intern.]
In my role as a Getty Foundation Graduate Intern I work in a department with twelve exhibit designers on projects at both the main Getty Center and the Getty Villa. I was assigned to projects working on three exhibits and was responsible for both graphic design and model building along with drafting exhibition floor plans. In some respects our department also serves as a mediator between the curators and the public, driving the concept that exhibits should be organized around “stories” to which visitors can relate rather than just upon art historical principles. Each year the exhibition design intern also produces individual projects for the department in order to better learn design programs and build a design portfolio. I created a calendar to promote the department and am also making a book about “how to design an exhibition.” There are twenty-three of us interns this year, each in different departments, from antiquities conservation to grants administration. We arrived in Los Angeles for our internships from all over the worldabout half the interns are internationaland the transition was easier because we had an instant group of friends. Also, there are staff members at the Getty devoted to supporting the interns and organizing programming for us. They prepared us by sending us a “survival
guidebook” compiled by previous interns with resource materials about everything from shipping and moving to where to best spot celebrities. By doing my internship through an established program, I get to continue in the same vein as the Museum Studies proseminars because I get to go on field trips. I went with the intern group on a mural tour of East L.A., to the Broad Art Foundation, the Watts Towers, LACMA, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, as well as on special tours of exhibits at the Getty and meetings with leaders at the museum. The best part, aside from getting paid with benefits, is the intern study trip. Each intern gets funding to go on a study trip to advance personal research. I went to Bangalore, India, to engage with students at the Shristi School of Art, Design, and Technology, giving talks and leading a workshop in addition to visiting area museums and heritage sites. The Getty, of course, has the ability to provide a terrific experience for interns. Even though it is an established program, there is a lot of flexibility to accommodate individual interests. And, even though I would have told you one year ago that I am definitely not the L.A. type, I really like it here.
Alison Byrnes (right) with Getty Program Officer in charge of internships, Angie Kim.
Local Favorite Returns to Michigan as Visiting Scholar
Harold Skramstad delivering the 2008 Whitesell Lecture to a standing room only audience. Harold K. Skramstad, President Emeritus of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, returned to Michigan for a week in March to serve as the 2008 Museum Studies Program Visiting Scholar. Skramstad’s return was something of an occasion for members of the local museum community, many of whom had worked with Skramstad during his Henry Ford years. Several public events featuring Skramstad drew participants from across the state and northern Ohio. The turnout at all of the public events was significant and the enthusiasm and affection for Skramstad was undeniable. Skramstad’s time with the Museum Studies Program was dominated by an ambitious schedule of activities. He led two evening sessions of the MSP graduate proseminar, one of which focused on his own writings, the second of which dealt with writings on topics ranging from natural history museums and the display of controversy in museums to questions regarding the role of native voice in the representation of indigenous cultures. Of special significance were Skramstad’s meetings to critique this year’s student exhibition proposal projects. Students benefited from Skramstad’s extensive knowledge; most groups emerged newly energized about their work. Whether the
topic at hand was mining in 19th century Michigan or contemporary African art, the legacy of the university’s contribution to information technology or the organizational needs of a local historical society, Skramstad quickly captured the critical issues at hand and provided expert counsel to MSP students. Though Skramstad also spent private time meeting with the staffs of several university and other local museums, he participated in several very public appearances. A morning meeting held at the Bentley Historical Library gathered members of the local museum community and university faculty to discuss the potential impact of current research on digital convergence—the emerging predominance of new knowledge and the means to document, store, retrieve, and provide access to that information in digital form—on museums. Over a dozen museums and several universities were represented at the working session. Skramstad was featured later that evening as the speaker for the second annual Whitesell Lecture (sponsored by the Bentley Historical Library), held at the Michigan League. Close to 150 were in the audience to hear Skramstad share his thoughts on the future of the American
museum in the 21st century, a fascinating update to Skramstad’s 1999 publication on the same subject. The range of topics covered in Skramstad’s talk was as diverse as his own varied interests and experiences (the full text of Skramstad’s lecture will soon be available as the first title in our new University of Michigan Working Papers in Museum Studies). Audience members stayed well after the lecture’s formal conclusion, eager to squeeze out some last moments with the very popular speaker. MSP’s Visiting Scholar Program continues to meet the very high expectations established for it. The participation of internationally renowned practitioners and innovative thinkers such as Harold Skramstad and Elaine Heumann Gurian serves as a galvanizing force among the local museum community on topics of shared interest, assures energetic discussion in the MSP proseminar, offers informed professional support to student work, and allows a number of important one-on-one interactions with students, faculty, and local museum professionals. The Museum Studies Program extends its sincere thanks to Harold Skramstad for enriching our program with his presence in 2008.
Kudos
MSP05
A collection of updates on the activities and many successes of Museum Studies Program students, past and present. . .
MSP03
MSP04
David Choberka has been researching and writing for the U-M Museum of Art’s reinstallation of their permanent collections. In addition to writing object labels, David is working on low-tech and multimedia interpretive content, including content design for the Dialogue Table.
Michael André is translating from German into English the first of six volumes of the Werkverzeichnis “Henry van de Velde,” a catalog project of the complete design works of Jugendstil innovator Henry van de Velde. The dual-language catalog project is being produced in conjunction with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in Weimar, Germany, where Michael completed his Museum Studies practicum.
Katie Johnson was promoted in June 2007 from Education Assistant to Assistant Curator of Education for Adult Learning at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Since completing her Ph.D. in the spring of 2007, Luna Khirfan has begun work as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies for the University of Waterloo’s School of Planning in Waterloo, Ontario. The University of Illinois at Chicago’s new Learning Science graduate program has appointed Leilah Lyons as an Assistant Professor. Starting in the fall of 2008, Leilah will have dual appointments in the Computer Science and Learning Science departments.
Chris Dempsey, Curator of the U-M Stearns Collection and a member of the 2005 MSP cohort, talking with MSP07 students about the challenges of managing a collection of musical instruments.
Erica Lehrer is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in PostConflict Memory, Ethnography, and Museology. She was recently awarded major infrastructural funds from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to develop the Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence (CEREV), a multi-media laboratory for curatorial innovation at Concordia. Diana Mankowski has been selected to join the U-M Museum of Art’s Student Programming and Advisory Board to help engage students with the new museum and especially to plan the student event for the opening of the new UMMA in winter 2009. In her capacity as a free-lance artist, Jennifer Zee has been hired by the San Diego Natural History Museum to assist in designing and creating their new Water Exhibit. Jennifer also works for the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, where she creates illustrations and graphics for the Exhibit and Education departments.
John Low has been named Executive Director of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, Illinois. In addition to his recent work at the Mitchell as a curatorial assistant, John’s experience as a tribal lawyer and his doctoral work in the American Culture and Museum Studies programs at U-M make him a valuable asset to the museum. He is the first Native American to lead the institution.
John Low (MSP05), Director of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, Illinois., standing next to a painting by Craig George. Leah Niederstadt was appointed Assistant Professor of Museum Studies/Art History and Curator of the Permanent Collection at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts in August 2007.
MSP06 Morgan Daniels, Jason Nargis, and Tamara Shreiner were featured speakers at the fall 2007 combined meeting of the Michigan Museums Association and the Association of Midwest Museums on Mackinac Island. Speakers were selected from a very competitive pool of graduate students from over a dozen museum studies programs in the Midwest.This marks the fourth year that the MSP has coordinated student research and practical engagement panels for the MMA. Anna Perricci has published a paper coauthored with Margaret Hedstrom in the volume (Im)permanence Cultures in/out of Time, eds. Judith Schachter and Stephen Brockmann (2008). Perricci’s paper considers the similar challenges posed in the preservation of digital and physical art and archives. After completing a Simmons Internship at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, in August 2007, Tammy Shreiner was hired there as Associate Curator of Education.
MSP07 Beatriz Zengotitabengoa has recently published an article called, “‘Guernica’ at Seventy: Picasso, Politics, and Process” in the Journal of the Society of Basque Studies in America. Congratulations to all!
A Year of Rich and Varied Public Programs In addition to this year’s Whitesell Lecture, the Museum Studies Program organized a number of other public events including lectures dealing with issues ranging from the preservation of cultural heritage in Mali (West Africa) to the relevance of objects for today’s museums. Maria Oriskova, a member of the faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, spent the month of March with us, during which she delivered a series of talks dealing with museum culture in Slovakia. The year ended with the visit of Nana Emmanuel Asare, a community development officer and a high-ranking chief in Techiman, Ghana (West Africa)—he and MSP Director, Ray Silverman, are collaborating on a project to create a community-focused cultural center in Techiman. October 18, 2007 The CultureBanks of Mali: ‘Saving’ Heritage and Providing Credit in West Africa Todd Crosby, Independent Scholar, Chicago November 1, 2007 The Morality of Exhibiting Indians:The Inaugural Exhibitions at the National Museum of the American Indian Craig P. Howe, Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies, Martin, SD, and Oglala Lakota College, Kyle, SD November 20, 2007 5O Years in Training: ICCROM and the Challenges of Teaching Preventive Conservation Worldwide Ana Maria Theresa P. Labrador, Department of Art Studies and Jorge B.Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center, University of the Philippines December 5, 2007 Representations of Africa in US Museums:The Role of the New Museum for African Art in New York Enid Schildkrout, Museum for African Art, New York March 11, 2008 Translating Tradition:The Slovak National Gallery After the Political Turn in 1989 Maria Oriskova, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava March 17, 2008 Curating as a Woman:Women Curators in the Past and Present in Slovakia Maria Oriskova, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava March 20, 2008 The Vienna School of Art History and the Role of the Museum: A Case Study of the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna Maria Oriskova, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava April 3, 2008 Do Museums Need Objects Anymore? Steven Conn, History Department and Public History Program, Ohio State University June 4, 2008 Nkwantananso: A New Cultural Center for Techiman (Ghana) Nana Emmanuel Asare, Community Development Officer and Chief, Techiman, Ghana.
Nana Emanuel Asare chatting with MSP Director Ray Silverman (center) and David Doris, a member of the U-M History of Art faculty.
Fall 2008 Admissions Students admitted to the fall 2008 cohort continue to expand the disciplinary breadth of the Museum Studies Program with the addition of Communication Studies and Comparative Literature as fields never before represented in the program. A warm welcome to all of this year’s incoming students!
Luciana Aenasoaie Anthropology and History, PhD
Marc Levitt Information, MSI
J. Amadeaus Scott Art+Design, MFA
Lea Bullard Education, PhD
Andrea McDonnell Communication Studies, PhD
Aimee VonBokel American Culture, PhD
Tiffany Chao Information, MSI
Mei-chen Pan Comparative Literature, PhD
Christine Efta Near Eastern Studies, PhD
Ricardo Punzalan Information, PhD
Museum Studies Program University of Michigan 4700 Haven Hall 505 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045