My Gallery is Bigger Than Your Gallery | Recording and Resources

 

On Thursday, November 21 at 2 pm (EST), Michael Dickins presented on the campus plan he has devised for the New Gallery at Austin Peay University.

Faced with limited storage space on campus, Dickins started a program (with strict parameters) to share the permanent collection with the campus community, while also creating an educational opportunity for Austin Peay students. With the permanent collection at their disposal, Dickin’s undergraduate student workers curate exhibitions to hang in department spaces.

For each exhibition, students write a curatorial statement, labels, and record an audio guide segment for each work that visitors can access through the app, Guide-by-Cell.

In his presentation, Dickins shares images of the finished exhibitions, and, as an open book, shares his trials, tribulations, and successes he encountered while running this campus plan program.


Benefits of this program, according to Michael Dickins:

  • Gets artwork into public sphere instead of hidden in storage (which ours is not large enough to house our collection)
  • Allows for academic buildings to look less ‘institutional’
  • Artwork only goes in spaces accessible to the public (NOT offices) – as it is a collection at a public university and needs to be accessible to the public.
  • Artwork gets installed on OUR schedule as myself and assistants have other duties.
  • Gives students experience in curating, installing, labeling, cataloguing in database, art handling, etc. – plus writing a curatorial statement.
  • This informs the occupants of said space that this is a teaching/education opportunity and not just decorating.

Future Events

Michael Dickins will be presenting at CAA’s Annual Conference on Wednesday, February 12: Is that Unprofessional? When Artists Curate, alongside our September Coffee Gathering host, Meredith Lynn.


Articles and Documents

Austin Peay Students Discover Work from Two Major Artists in University’s Collection

The New Gallery Collections Management Policy

View PDF

About Ourselves/Inside Ourselves at the Denison Museum

Student Engagement with Eric Segal

In this segment, Eric Segal, Director of Education and Curator of Academic Programs at the Harn Museum of Art, speaks about student engagement. Segal expands on how the museum becomes a part of many students’ experiences at the University of Florida through a required freshman year course (The Good Life), volunteering, internships, and by having professors curate exhibitions from the collection which reflect their unique perspective and discipline.

Unexpected connections: New team-teaching model in liberal arts explores interdisciplinary learning approaches

At Colorado State University, Erika Osborne, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History, and Lynn Badia, an assistant professor in the Department of English will teach an interdisciplinary course on energy.

Osbourne and Badia’s course, “Cultural Extraction: Energy in the Humanities,”  will focus on “the relatively new concept of ‘energy humanities’ looks at the relationship between energy and our daily lives through a variety of lenses.” The instructors built field trips into to the course and have also “incorporated artists, films, literature and even TV series to provide context around the energy theme.”

In response to what they are learning in class and on field trips to the the Fort St. Vrain Generating Station in Platteville and the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, students will create a “‘mock museum’ — a museum set in the future containing artifacts from our current time” which will be installed  at  the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art’s Robert W. Hoffert Learning Center at the end of the fall 2018 semester. The exhibition will be titled “Museum of Energy Transitions: Real and Speculative.”

The mock museum will be open from Dec. 12 through Dec. 15 during regular museum hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Dec. 13.  (Colorado State University)

Image above: Students tour the Fort St. Vrain Generating Station in Platteville.

University of Oregon student curates exhibition of 1950s French artist books

University of Oregon History of Art and Architecture graduate student, Emily Shinn, curated the exhibition “Fernand Léger’s ‘Cirque’ and the ‘livre d’artiste’” at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Shinn worked under the guidanc eof  Danielle Knapp, McCosh Associate Curator, to complete this M.A. terminal project.

“I think the exhibition, my experience behind the scenes, and the final product open to the public, will provide a much needed example of an MA terminal project in Art History,” says Shinn. “It demonstrates the relationships possible for students between the Department of the History of Art & Architecture and the JSMA.” (Art Daily)