SPRING 2020
ARTH 6010 Museum Curatorial Practicum
K. McGowan
W 2:30 – 4:25
This Curatorial Practicum evolved out of a Johnson Museum of Art's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation initiative in 2014. The seminar is collaborative and thematic, combining the expertise of museum curators with professors in the History of Art and Visual Studies. Scheduled to meet at the museum, “Dayak by Design” will be the overarching theme for Spring 2020, taught by Associate Professor Kaja M. McGowan, Chief Curator & Curator of Asian Art, Ellen Avril, and The Gary & Ellen Davis Curator of Photography, Kate Addleman-Frankel. Drawing from the Johnson Museum’s holdings and the wealth of Indonesian archival collections of Dayak material at the Cornell University Library, students will be encouraged to explore the politics of display, museum interventions and institutional critique, and shifting attitudes toward performance and rituals of spectatorship. They will also be invited to examine questions of heritage tourism, small-scale artisanal activity, provenance, repatriation, and community engagement. This interdisciplinary course will engage theory with museum practice. For the final project, students will be encouraged to engage with works in the collections that connect with their chosen area of research.
