The Campus Art Museum - Samuel H. Kress Foundation

More documents

Recommendations

Info

A Town/Gown Divide? As the reach of the campus art museum expands, one might expect some tension between serving the community and serving the campus, yet none of the museum directors in the study perceive this as a problem. Academic museums generally need both community and institutional support. Not only do they receive some economic support from the community in the form of donations, grants, service fees, space rental fees, and sometimes admission fees and sales at gift stores; the museums also often recruit docents, volunteers, security staff, and members of museum boards or associations from the community. In return, the academic art museums provide school-age students with access to art in an era when budget cuts frequently remove art classes from public schools. One museum director stated, I feel no tension at all [between serving the community and the university]. Occasionally when we do our strategic planning and everybody said, “Who’s our primary audience?” and there were all these debates… I basically said, “Guys, let’s be realistic…. We’ve already said that the university is our prime audience, and… we are already proportionately doing more for that primary audience, but we are never going to cut out our K-12 programs. That is essential to build new audiences, to engage youngsters in the world of art…. It’s important, it’s really important, especially with no art in the schools.” That “town and gown” is not as dualistic as first appears became increasingly evident through visits to the museums. The participation of college or university students and faculty is often vital to community events and the participation of the community is sometimes of primary interest for faculty and students. A museum director noted: An odd twist to all this is that even though I came here with the focus on the academic mission and we’ve done that, what’s developed is that the old antagonism between being a public museum and being a university museum has sort of dissolved… a lot of the departments out there who use us actively as part of their curriculum, depend upon us because we are a public museum. Art educators, for example, aren’t just interested in coming here to see art, they want kids in here that they can study to see what pedagogy works. The same thing with the journalism folks. They love working us but they love working with us because we are a laboratory they can use. The Journalism School at this institution, in fact, created a formal arts reporting track. In addition, the museum and the Department of Art History and Archaeology were re-launching a museum studies track to make use of the campus museum as a living laboratory, involving the university and the community. Students at the various museums agree that the campus museum should not be for them alone, but rather open to everyone: A Town/Gown Divide? 28
The museum is necessary for the whole community, not only for the campus and for the Tucson area and Arizona, but we have people from out of state. They come particularly to look at our Retablo…. 11 We have people from actually out of the country who come here. And to see that we have these amazing European pieces of artwork or a pretty good collection of contemporary art, it just benefits everybody because we can be here and be known as a place that’s not particularly just for the students, where people come in to appreciate the art and not just write homework assignments. Figure 11.3. Chaos, after 1493, Maestro Bartolomé, Samuel H. Kress Collection, University of Arizona Museum of Art, University of Arizona 11. The Retablo of the Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo consists of twenty-six panels by Fifteenth Century Spanish painters Fernando Gallego and Maestro Bartolomé. Donated by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Retablo is one of the most important altarpieces produced by Spanish masters. A Town/Gown Divide? 29
Page 1 and 2:
The Campus Art Museum: A Qualitativ
Page 3 and 4:
Table of Contents The Campus Art Mu
Page 5 and 6:
study began with a possible researc
Page 7 and 8: exposure to art as a child, a cours
Page 9 and 10: The Campus Art Museum: A Qualitativ
Page 11 and 12: Table of Contents Effects and Influ
Page 13 and 14: ecause although “there’s so muc
Page 15 and 16: Study Participants and Methods 2 Th
Page 17 and 18: Similarly to UAMA, the gift from th
Page 19 and 20: a donor had something, they’d say
Page 21 and 22: are so many people sometimes that t
Page 23 and 24: Art History and other Art Curricula
Page 25 and 26: those paintings…. They are a kind
Page 27 and 28: The respondent situated this strugg
Page 29 and 30: and with the public in general. Rep
Page 33 and 34: Table of Contents Art Across the Cu
Page 35 and 36: 1969, enabling government support f
Page 37 and 38: Everyone spends an afternoon at the
Page 39 and 40: professors about using the museum a
Page 41 and 42: Skill Development Figure 11.1. Comp
Page 43 and 44: talk about the objects, and they te
Page 45 and 46: We’ve got kids from all over camp
Page 47 and 48: eflected on the role of artists as
Page 49 and 50: Collaborations Among Museum Staff a
Page 51 and 52: assignment and promoted it in a cam
Page 53 and 54: focusing on people who have followe
Page 55 and 56: at a narrow slice of researchers in
Page 57: too thin. Nobody could do that posi
Page 61 and 62: when they say, “I want to show al
Page 63 and 64: its collections into courses tends
Page 67 and 68: Table of Contents Museum Art in Eve
Page 69 and 70: It’s is about getting students in
Page 71 and 72: Engaging Through Social Events Soci
Page 73 and 74: thing for them to get organized for
Page 75 and 76: where they receive units of credit
Page 77 and 78: Table 111.1. How Interviewees Becam
Page 79 and 80: Table 111.3. Gender of Research Par
Page 81 and 82: Sometimes such moments were matched
Page 83 and 84: museum. I asked what careers they h
Page 85 and 86: Appendix A Acronyms or Abbreviation
Page 87 and 88: Job/ Internship Museum Visits “I
Page 91 and 92: Table of Contents Challenges and Co
Page 93 and 94: Metaphor and Meaning of the Campus
Page 95 and 96: that it is particularly prevalent.
Page 97 and 98: artists to the museum’s collectio
Page 99 and 100: 2008). 4 This emphasis reflects a l
Page 101 and 102: Institutional support, economical a
Page 103 and 104: I had to fire a senior curator; I h
Page 105 and 106: cognizant of what is going on globa
Page 107 and 108: specialist, and professional staff.
Page 109 and 110:
“One of the things that’s hard
Page 111 and 112:
A safety catch in protecting signif
Page 113 and 114:
“...medical studies have been don
Page 115 and 116:
Appendix IV. A. Interpretive Distil
Page 117 and 118:
access to the highest quality arts.
Page 119 and 120:
UAMA: The University of Arizona Mus
Page 121:
Sources Cameron, D. F. 2004. The Mu
show all

The Campus Art Museum - Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?