ARTH-210

This course is designed to introduce students to the museum as a social institution and public space that produces value, organizes material culture, and structures knowledge. An exploration of the ways in which museum display can augment and/or alter the meanings and functions of objects will be central to the class. Students will examine the birth of the museum in eighteenth century Europe as a product of Enlightenment values and imperial ambitions. Using historical and contemporary examples, primarily from Britain, France, and the United States, students will research and critique shifting collecting and exhibition philosophies. The class will explore the following topics (and more) as they relate to the rhetoric of display: identity formation, race and gender politics, memory and history, ethnography and social taxonomy, museum architecture and gallery design, legal frameworks related to the circulation and repatriation of objects, "non-Western" art in Western museums, sacred art in secular spaces, narrative constructions and claims of historical veracity, development and use of digital technologies, and the modern encyclopedic museum. Various written assignments based on museum field trips, presentations, and class discussion are required. May be taken for credit toward the Art-Environmental Studies major or the Law, Culture and the Humanities minor. Prerequisite: Art History 203; or consent of instructor. Distribution areas: Cultural Pluralism, Fine Arts, Humanities, Global Cultures and Languages, Power and Equity, Studying the Past, Textual Analysis.