The Campus Art Museum - Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Art Across the Curriculum
[O]rigins of the term museum lay in the ancient Greek word for the abode of
the muses, or the nine sisters who were the offspring of Zeus and Mnemosyne
(memory). As the children of Memory, the muses are closely associated with
the act of thinking and remembering, essential aspects in the process of
learning and creativity. (Lowry 2004, 139)
“Art museums in general are looking to education... education programs are
growing,” stated an academic curator. She identified two probable reasons: As art
programs are slashed in public schools, art museums try to ensure that children
still receive some exposure to art; and academic art museums increasingly seek
greater participation in the curriculum on their own campuses. The museums in
this study 1 are indeed working with public schools and also engaging in innovative
ways with the academic life of their institutions. This report focuses on academic
involvement—on the acts of experiencing and learning, thinking and creativity—
enabled by campus art museums. It is divided into seven sections: Attracting
Faculty to the Campus Art Museum; Meeting Course Objectives through the Art
Museum; Collaborations among Museum Staff and Faculty; Museum Exhibitions
and their Integration into Classes and Research; Foundation Support for Academic
Integration of Art across the Curriculum; A Town/Gown Divide?; and The Power of
the Original.
Efforts by campus art museums to integrate art into the curriculum of
colleges and universities are somewhat new. Before the 1940s, art history or fine
arts departments often had resource centers that housed art collections, including
photo collections and slide libraries. These collections were primarily for use
by arts faculty in research and teaching (Bradley 2009, 1). The era following the
1940s saw a drastic rise in the number of art museums on campuses, with an
emphasis placed on acquiring valuable collections. These museums also began
expanding their missions to serve K-12 students in public schools, becoming “the
community museum on a college campus” (Bradley 2009, 1). By reaching out into
the community, museums obtained both community support and funds.
Education as a mission of the museum received a boost during the turbulent
1960s when public and private funding sources began demanding that museums
attend to their role in promoting social consciousness (Williams 2007). Campus
museums became even more community-focused, adopted professional standards
and practices, and sought to separate themselves from departmental politics,
becoming somewhat autonomous units on campus. The Tax Reform Act of
1. Data for this document come from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College; Indiana University Art
Museum; Snite Museum of Art at Notre Dame University; David and Alfred Smart Museum at University of Chicago;
the University of Arizona Museum of Art; the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas; and the University of
Missouri Museum of Art and Archaeology. The site selection process involved “extreme case” sampling in that campus
art museums that had received Kress Collections (twenty-three) were asked to self-identify as exemplary of what
campus art museums at their best could be, and to submit evidence if interested in participating in the study. With the
resulting pool, maximum variation sampling was used to select cases that varied widely on indicators such as private/
public institutions, large/small campus populations, rural/urban locations, and recipient or not of the Mellon Foundation’s
College and University Art Museum Program multi-year grants.
Art Across the Curriculum
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