The Campus Art Museum - Samuel H. Kress Foundation

e seen within other, for lack of a better word, emotions? And love is something
that would engage most college students and our laboratory is, in essence, the
artwork. And so one question is whether there is a difference between Eastern
and Western portrayals of love. But we also ask whether the portrayals of love
in art are true to what scientists would say should be happening in the bodies.
For another example of comparative analysis, a professor of fashion design
and clothing construction takes her students to the campus art museum to look
at how styles change over time and to link changes in clothing and fabrics to the
larger socio-political context:
For the fashion student, [the art museum has] been so extremely valuable to
understand clothing better, to understand even what nudity means. Is nudity
glamour or is it what is done to the imprisoned? …I bring all the textile
students here [to the campus art museum] because they need to see what fabric
has meant over time.
These cases from anthropology, biology, and fashion design represent several
of the disciplines where professors have learned how art can engage students in
comparative analysis of a concept, behavior, or materiality across cultures and
over time. Another way that professors and curators/educators use art is to critique
societal issues as touched upon next.
Critiquing Social Issues
Perhaps because the art museums in this study are on college and university
campuses, curators are not hesitant to address hot issues or engage in social critique
through special exhibitions. These are sometimes done in conjunction with specific
courses or become drawing cards for classes examining similar issues. For example,
campus art museums in this study have had exhibitions on censorship, the “sex
of art,” nudity and nakedness, anorexia, the politics of photography, etc. Such
exhibitions attract classes in gender studies, sociology, journalism, and literature,
in particular. Exhibitions that explore societal issues tend to generate great interest
on campus because they connect to students’ personal lives and their questioning
of societal values. They also allow the curator to “rediscover parts of the collection
that haven’t been used for years.” Of course, exhibitions that employ social
critique or that are edgy sometimes become the object of critique themselves as a
curator of education described: “We still sometimes get in trouble with students
or their families. They’ll say, ‘How dreadful for [the university] to spend money on
something like that.’”
Museum staff talk also about using artwork as a means to engage students
in conversations about social issues such as racism, sexism, prejudice, and
stereotyping. An academic curator refers to this as “difficult dialogue” talk—a
discussion that is “object-centered, but used to talk about difficult ethical situations,
such as abortion or racial inequities.” The paintings or museum objects help to
provide a “safe space” for the conversations, and in the process, according to
the curator, “the object becomes a participant in the dialogue.” An art historian
Meeting Course Objectives through the Art Museum
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