Situating Black & Brown Art in Museums
Course Description
Summary
In collaboration with Mass MoCA’s Director of Public Programs, Lisa Dent, this course will combine art history and museum education as modes of inquiry into the unique challenges of presenting and contextualizing Black and brown artists in museums. Students will engage deeply with three solo exhibitions at Mass MoCA: (1) RACE/HUSTLE by Zora J. Murff, whose work “bluntly signifies how the art museum itself is part of the cultural arm of white supremacy and state power,” (2) Vincent Valdez’s Just a Dream, and (3) Jimena Sarno’s Rhapsody.
About his work, Valdez states, “I create images as instruments to probe the past in order to reveal an immediacy to what is occurring today. I am alarmed by the denial of history. I will continue to create counter-images to impede the social amnesia that includes our fateful desire to repeat it.” Similarly concerned with “counter-images,” Sarno’s exhibition functions as an “alternative to Modernism’s utilization of cultural production as a tool to imagine utopian futures while reinforcing global systems of coloniality.”
Both onsite at the museum and in weekly sessions on Bennington’s campus, students will work to unpack these exhibitions’ racial, sociohistorical, critical, and arts historical potentials through discussion, supplemental readings, and in-depth critical written responses. Students will assist in planning, attend, and help facilitate public programs related to these exhibitions at the museum alongside staff. All in all, students should plan to spend two hours a week at the museum and two hours a week in class on campus.
Learning Outcomes
- Develop familiarity with museum studies, curation, public programming, and arts criticism as professional and academic fields
- Broaden understand of contemporary Black and brown artists
- Connect works of critical theory to contemporary arts discourse
Prerequisites
Students should have completed advanced level work related to Black Studies, art history, or museums, libraries/archives. Students should email the faculty to inquire, sending a statement of interest and 5-7 pages of critical writing.
Please contact the faculty member : anduplan@bennington.edu
Corequisites
● Students will be required to attend at least two public programs at Mass MoCA, which may be scheduled on evenings and/or weekends.
● Students must arrange for their own transportation to and from Mass MoCA.
●Students are responsible for attending Mass MoCA two hours each week, Wednesdays 12:30-2:30pm. Students who are unable to attend during that time slot may request alternative hours; however, these hours will be self-guided, with the assistance of a Mass MoCA staff member.