AAP 519SEM - Contextualizing the Museum

Museums have long ceased to understand themselves and to be perceived as solitary temples for the muses. Today, most museums find themselves constantly negotiating their institutional identity as educator, community platform, and site of entertainment and consumption. Discussing their place in society today therefore requires addressing their interconnections with societal, cultural, and economical questions. This course addresses the museum as a phenomenon that is embedded into three complexes of inquiry: site, memory, and the public. By investigating different exemplary cases of spatial and institutional (site), historical (memory) and social/commercial (public) nature, this course raises broader issues that impact museums today. Other, related topics examine the urban and spatial interrelation between museums and the city, questions of censorship and cultural appropriation, monumentality, commemoration, and cultural identity.

Credits: 3