Academic Highlights at the Museum of Art during the 2024 Spring Semester

Our last update on academic initiatives came as we were rounding out the fall semester. We have several new updates now that we are heading into the last few weeks of the 2023–2024 academic year.   

Some highlights from before the winter break include hosting scholars and students to look at examples of works with Arabic inscriptions in our Zuckert Seminar Room in conjunction with the Arabic Calligraphy Workshop, led by preceptor at Harvard University Muhammad Abib and facilitated by Lecturer in Arabic at Bowdoin College Batool Khattab. We also welcomed several classes from Bates College and the Maine College of Art and Design, underscoring the Museum’s efforts to be an educational partner with peer institutions in Maine and beyond.

Our teaching schedule resumed in late January with the start of the spring semester. In addition to object-based learning in the Museum’s classroom, several current exhibitions have prompted discussions with classes. For instance, Professor of Asian Studies and English Belinda Kong, Professor of History and Environmental Studies Connie Chiang, and A. Myrick Freeman Professor of Social Sciences Nancy Riley brought their multidisciplinary course “Asian America and Empire” to examine the exhibition Without Apology: Asian American Selves, Memories, Futures, co-curated by these three Bowdoin faculty members in addition to Bowdoin Professor of Asian Studies and Cinema Studies Shu-Chin Tsui and Assistant Professor of Sociology Shruti Devgan. This was a remarkable example of synergy between the Museum’s curatorial aims and teaching mission, as students were able to dive deeply into the exhibition while being guided by its organizers, who were also their instructors. In this way, the class not only studied the artworks on view but also caught a glimpse into how scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives approach art history when tasked with crafting an exhibition.

The exhibition “The Book of Two Hemispheres:” Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the United States and Europe has also drawn much interest from instructors and other visitors. Classes in Francophone Studies and Art History have, for instance, used the exhibition not only to discuss the history of transatlantic slavery and abolition but also to see how museums make research visible.

The BCMA has played a role in Professor of Art History Stephen Perkinson’s course, “Critical Museum Studies,” as a real-life example of a working institution. Early in the semester, the class met with BCMA Co-Director Anne Collins Goodyear and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow Sean Kramer and learned about the early history of the collection, specifically the founding bequest of seventy paintings and 141 drawings by James Bowdoin III, as well as the 1860 acquisition of five Assyrian relief sculptures gifted by missionary and Bowdoin graduate Henri Byron Haskell. The range of conversations during this visit addressed art museums’ roles in crafting certain models of citizenship in the early United States and how they reckon with difficult pasts, including their own fraught histories. The class returned a few weeks later to examine different forms of museum interpretation which yielded a thought-provoking discussion on the uses and shortcomings on didactic elements such as content warnings in galleries.

Professor of Economics Zorina Khan also drew on Museum staff’s knowledge and expertise during several visits with the class “Economics in Art and Culture.” In the first visit, Sean Kramer and Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs Sabrina Lin led the students through the galleries, analyzing how museums communicate with visitors about their founding, evolving missions, and formation of their collections. In the second, students had an in-depth conversation with BCMA Co-Directors Anne and Frank Goodyear to learn about how this institution fits into the history of museums more broadly and some of the challenges faced by museums today. For their the third and final visit, students gained insight into the Museum’s financial structure and arts-based non-profit organizations with BCMA Associate Director of Finances and Operations Amy Morin. Across these sessions, the class was able to learn about how museums from staff with their own range of backgrounds and perspectives.

Classes in Visual Art, Art History, Anthropology, German, English, Francophone Studies, Hispanic Studies, Chemistry, and numerous other departments are planned during what promises to be a busy month of April.

 

Sean Kramer
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

 

Illustration: Amy Morin, associate director of finances and operations, Museum of Art, speaks with a class in the Zuckert Seminar Room.