Curating the Curriculum Workshop, June 15-17, 2011
Carleton College
Laurel Bradley (lbradley@carleton.edu)
Steven Dubin, “Introduction: Museums as Contested Sites,” Displays of Power: Controversies
in the New American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation!, NYU Press, 2001, 1 – 17.
Peter Vergo, “The Reticent Object,” The New Museology, University of Chicago Press, 1997,
41 – 59.
John Weber, "Thinking Spacially: New Literacy, Museums, and the Academy," Educause
Review, vol 42/1, Jan/Feb 2007, 68-69
Beverly Serrell, Exhibition Labels: An Interpretive Approach, 1996.
Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum, 2010 2 copies available for consultation.
Janet Marstine, “What a Mess! Claiming a Space for Student Experimentation in the University
Museum,”
Museum Management and Curatorship , vol. 22/3, 2007, 303-315. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09647770701628644
Optional – a thought piece:
Susan Stewart, “Objects of Desire: The Souvenir and the Collection,” On Longing: Narratives
of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Duke UP, 1993, 132 – 169.
Elizabeth Schlatter, Curator, University of Richmond Museums http://www.aam-us.org/pubs/mn/newspin.cfm
“A New Spin: Are DJs, rappers and bloggers ‘curators’?”
Articles related to the Workshop, including those above, are posted on https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/viz/programs/workshops/ .
FOLDER CONTENTS:
Workshop Syllabus
List of Participants
Gould Library Exhibitions Timelines
Teaching Museum Exhibitions Timeline
Exhibition labels: examples from Carleton courses
One sample exhibition prospectus (from SITES, Smithsonian Institution Traveling
Exhibition Service)
Sample Loan guidelines (Columbia University Library System)
Evaluation Rubrics (2)
Sample assignments and syllabi
Workshop evaluation
WEDNESDAY/DAY ONE
I. INTROS: goals; biggest fear/phobias
II. Exhibitions – Basic characteristics; define as discursive format. When/why to choose exhibitions over other formats; Exhibitions as narrative?

Objects: Define. Objects as texts; as souvenirs; as residue. Object; artifact; thing; stuff. Speaking objects. Art objects as privileged objects. Objects vs. texts vs. images/reproductions. The souvenir vs. the specimen
Collections. Exhibitions drawing from specific collections. What does a collection mean as an exhibition source? Frame?
III. Susan Jaret McKinstry, professor of English; co-director of VIZ initiative. On
“real” objects vs. images (of real objects); vs. reproductions (of real art images).
PLUS tales from the front – what has worked, what not from a seasoned faculty curator.
Aisling Quigley, VIZ associate: Guide to the Viz website as resource.
IV. Break.
Perusal time – Exhibition catalogues to demonstrate various organizing approaches.
Pick a book/catalogue – be prepared to comment on structures/relational system at work. See list.
V. Framing. Shaping.
Ideological issues. Narrative challenges.
VI. Small groups – working up an exhibition proposal/prospectus
Title (seven words or less)
The Big Idea (Serrell) “A Big Idea is a sentence—a statement—of what the exhibition is about. It is a statement in one sentence, with a subject, an action, and a consequence.”
Objects: define type and approx number
Source/s for objects
Security requirements (cf SITES examples)
Venue
Audience/s
Display methods/challenges/strategies. (For those among you working on actual upcoming exhibition, get very specific. If you plan to display charts, annotated illustrations, etc think through how these will be produced/mounted (or not), posted to the wall, displayed in a case (what case, how procured, etc?). What are the walls made of?
Homework:
1. Serrell: page through this book. 2. Work on exhibition proposal.
3. Peruse website below. Tang Teaching Museum (Check under Faculty and Teaching) http://tang.skidmore.edu/
Select one or two projects/ideas that model best practices, inspire imitation, provoke
disagreement.

THURSDAY/DAY 2
Objects. Objects become exhibitions.
The Magic of tangible things. Object-based learning in higher ed.
New Trends: in European and Canadian museums.
Watch video: Tangible Things: Harvard Collections
Portland Museum of Art: Object Stories http://objectstories.org/
Consult Tang Teaching Museum catalogues: A Contemporary Art Museum and real stuff.
THE ANATOMY OF AN EXHIBITION: Loans, the exhibition prospectus, reconciling the actual in the age of the virtual.
The Trials and Tribulations of Collecting Real Objects for exhibition.
Carol Donelan, professor of Cinema and Media Studies, co-curator of
Modernizing Melodrama: Trials and triumphs behind Melodrama exhibition.
Plus reflections on offering a course the term before the gallery exhibition.
Loans – http://library.columbia.edu/services/policies/loans_for_exhibits.html
Timelines – see folder
Exhibition Texts: Beverly Serrell, the Big Idea, and tales from the front.
Discussion: Is an exhibition project just another writing assignment?
See folder for examples.
Group work time.
Homework
1. Janet Marstine, Seton Hall University, “What a Mess!
Claiming a Space for Student Experimentation in the University Museum.”
2. Peruse website below. Select one or two posts that model best practices, inspire imitation, provoke disagreement. What the heck is a “participatory” or audiencecentered museum? And what does this have to do with our students/audience/assignments?
Museum 2.0 http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/
2a. See below re labels that ask questions.
DAY THREE/FRIDAY
Checking in with the “Audience Centered Museum.”
Display strategies.
Evaluation Rubrics.

Review/Refresh/Discuss (cool ideas and examples from homework).
Nina Simon: The Participatory Museum
Curatorial/content based emphasis vs. experience/audience-centered emphasis
Labels that ask questions: a. Serrell, chapter 10 b. Simon, Participatory Museum, chapter 4:
Three Reasons to ask questions in exhibitions
*To encourage visitors to engage deeply and personally with a specific object
*To motivate interpersonal dialogue among visitors around a particular object of idea.
*The provide feedback or useful information to staff about an object/exhibition.
Display strategies: from down-home display to pristine professional exhibitions.
Janet Marstine article.
Evaluation rubrics: Exercise with Library exhibition.
Retool Rubrics in tune with our needs/goals (what are our desired outcomes?)
Don’t forget Serrell’s p 234-5: Deadly Sins and Helpful Research Findings.
Prospectus Presentations. Next steps. Further challenges.
EVALUATION/S
Websites
Embark: Carleton Art Collection database http://embark.ads.carleton.edu/
Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. http://www.sites.si.edu/
The Giuseppe Vasi project. http://vasi.uoregon.edu/catalog/
Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs. http://hereisnewyork.org/
Object-based learning in Museums
Tangible Things: Harvard Collections in World History www.generaleducation.fas.harvard.edu/.../icb.do
?...
Reading Artifacts Summer Institute, Canada Science and Technology Museums http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/whatson/2011-reading-artifacts-summerinstitute.cfm
The Challenge of the Object, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremburg, Congress of International
Committee of the History of Art. http://www.ciha2012.de/en/home.html
The Sensuous Object, Medical Museum, Copenhagen. http://147.156.155.104/?q=node/560
ALSO ON THE VIZ/SERC SITE
Laurel Bradley, “Exhibiting Artists’ Books: Three Perspectives from a Curatorial Seminar,” coauthored with Kristi Wermager and Gabriel Perri Silberblatt, in The Past as Portal: Teaching

Undergraduates Using Special Collections and Archives, Summer 2011 Editors: Eleanor Mitchell,
Peggy Seiden, Suzy Taraba Publisher: Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
“Curricular Connections: The College/University Art Museum as Site for Teaching and Learning,” caa.reviews, August 2009