The Campus Art Museum - Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Concluding Thoughts Duncan Cameron (1971/2004, 69) in The Museum: A Temple or a Forum, states that many museums cannot decide whether they want to remain a temple or become a forum for “confrontation and experimentation.” Temple and forum were not metaphors generally used by study participants. They are useful, however, for describing how, increasingly, the perception and role of the campus art museum is changing. As a temple, the museum holds precious gems and people make pilgrimages to stand before great works of art. As a forum, the museum is a catalyst for various kinds of interactions that might be more like a laboratory or even a portal for the mixing of peoples and ideas. The thriving campus art museum is one that embraces its role as facilitator for all kinds of dialogues, research, performances, exhibits, and experiences. It welcomes diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives. It sees its role as serving a population broader than the arts community and it seeks to make a difference not only in the academic lives of students and faculty but also in their and others’ day-today lives. It also considers how the museum itself is part of the broader culture of the campus and local community and seeks to be a leader and model in local initiatives. The thriving campus art museum chooses directors with vision and energy. The director and staff work at developing positive relationships with institutional administrators, potential donors, and the wider community. They tend to create national boards that assist through advice, connections, and donations. In return, campus administrators and legislatures understand the value of the campus art museum as a site of teaching and learning, research and scholarship, and creativity and experiences that goes well beyond valuable pictures on a wall. As museum directors across the country are quick to point out, raising funds to help support museum activities is part of their work. A balance must be reached, however, between support by the parent organization and revenue raised by the museum, so that the director and staff can put time and energy into the creative activities for which they are well-trained and positioned. This study of exemplary campus art museums suggests that it is possible for a campus art museum to be well-integrated into a college or university. The kinds of things that make a difference include visionary leadership and talented staff who reach out across the disciplines; a campus-wide history and culture of supporting the arts; a campus-wide context of commitment to interdisciplinary education and research; and ability to obtain resources to carry out the museum’s vision. Similarly, in Making Museums Matter, Stephen Weil (2002, 63) states that, “the things that make a museum good are its purpose to make a positive difference in the quality of people’s lives, its command of resources adequate to that purpose, and its possession of a leadership determined to ensure that those resources are being directed and effectively used toward that end.” Although availability of sufficient resources is problematic for several of the museums in the study, all are seeking to make a difference in the quality of people’s lives and, from the perspectives of those interviewed, are succeeding. A curator describes the work in which the museum staff and others from across the campus are engaged as one of “rethinking what a museum is, what is should be, and what it can be.” Through work like this, some campus art museums are mattering, to quote Weil (2002, 74) again, in “many marvelous ways.” Concluding Thoughts 26
Appendix IV. A. Interpretive Distillations of Selected Aspects of Interviews with Academic Art Museum Directors This appendix provides a few “interpretive distillations” of interview transcripts. These displays use only the words of the interviewee, but many words are edited out to “distill” the essence of the perspective. Some sequencing of the interviewee’s talk may be rearranged. These distillations, sometimes referred to as poetic transcriptions, are put into blank verse form to distinguish them from direct quotations. Metaphor My metaphor for this museum is a tree— a core system that branches in many directions. Each branch has interdependence, each leaf turns towards the sun. We live in a grassland, prairie grass, big blue stem taller than me in wild prairie. Underneath, longer than up here. A way to create endurance, to weather wind, snow, fire. All that is under the surface, waiting the next season. I started with the leaves, not the trunk. Now I feel like we have [the trunk] and I need to get out here again, but bigger, to establish us nationally—internationally. Mission Statement We didn’t want a mission statement that sounded stupid. We had consultants work with us, a long laborious process. And then we’d use it for six months and say, “No, that doesn’t really work.” The one we have, the senior team word-smithed. We said, “Not too sexy, but it’s what we do, what we are.” I still look at it and think it’s pretty much who we are and what we do: The intersection of art, ideas, and experience. Key—the heart of it—a place of crossing. Appendix IV. A. 27
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The Campus Art Museum: A Qualitativ
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Table of Contents The Campus Art Mu
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study began with a possible researc
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exposure to art as a child, a cours
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Table of Contents Effects and Influ
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ecause although “there’s so muc
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Study Participants and Methods 2 Th
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Similarly to UAMA, the gift from th
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a donor had something, they’d say
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are so many people sometimes that t
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Art History and other Art Curricula
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those paintings…. They are a kind
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The respondent situated this strugg
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and with the public in general. Rep
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Table of Contents Art Across the Cu
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1969, enabling government support f
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Everyone spends an afternoon at the
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professors about using the museum a
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Skill Development Figure 11.1. Comp
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talk about the objects, and they te
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We’ve got kids from all over camp
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eflected on the role of artists as
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Collaborations Among Museum Staff a
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assignment and promoted it in a cam
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focusing on people who have followe
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at a narrow slice of researchers in
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too thin. Nobody could do that posi
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The museum is necessary for the who
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when they say, “I want to show al
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