Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums

Edited by Pat Villeneuve, Ann Rowson Love

Publication date:

17 March 2017

Length of book:

298 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442278998

Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums promotes balanced practices that are visitor-centered while honoring the integrity and powerful storytelling of art objects. Book examples present best practices that move beyond the turning point, where curation and education are engaged in full and equal collaboration. With a mix of theory and models for practice, the book:
• provides a rationale for visitor-centered exhibitions;
• addresses important related issues, such as collaboration and evaluation; and,
• presents success stories written by educators, curators, and professors from the United States and Europe.
• introduces the edu-curator, a new vision for leadership in museums with visitor-centered
exhibition practices.
The book is intended for art museum practitioners, including educators, curators, and exhibitions designers, as well as higher education faculty and students in art/museum education, art history, and museum studies.

Foreword by Kaywin Feldman
Preface
Acknowledgements

Part I. Foundations: The Need for Edu-Curation

1. From There to Here: In Support of Visitor-Centered Exhibitions
Pat Villeneuve

2. Edu-Curation and the Edu-Curator
Ann Rowson Love and Pat Villeneuve

3. Rethinking Curator/Educator Training and Interaction in the Co-Production of Art Museum Exhibitions
Brian Hogarth

Part II. Readiness: Structuring Your Approach

4. From Consultation to Collaboration: Mechanisms for Integrating Community Voices into Exhibition Development
Judith Koke and Keri Ryan
5. Dynamic Moments: Testing High-Engagement Visitor Experiences at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
Maia Werner-Avidon, Deborah Clearwaters and Dany Chan

6. Cu-Rate: Starting Curatorial Collaboration with Evaluation
Ann Rowson Love

7. Aligning Authority with Responsibility for Interpretation
Kathryn E. Blake, Jerry N. Smith and Christian Adame

Part III. Collaboration in Action

8. Beyond the Gate: Collaborating with Living Artists to Bring Communities into the Museum and the Museum into Communities
Maureen Thomas-Zaremba and Matthew McLendon

9. Collaboration Within and Outside the Museum: Student-Written Labels in a Featured Exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Rosie Riordan and Stephanie Fox Knappe

10. Supported Interpretation: Building a Visitor-Centered Exhibition Model
Pat Villeneuve

11. The Absolute Resolution Photography Exhibition: Facilitating Visitor Engagement with Supported Interpretation (SI)
Alicia Viera, Carla Ellard and Kathy Vargas

12. Visitor as Activist: A Mobile Social Justice Museum's Call for Critical Visitor Engagement
Monica O. Montgomery and Hannah Heller

Part IV. Seeing Inside the Process

13. Multivocal, Collaborative Practices in Community-Based Art Museum Exhibitions
Marianna Pegno and Chelsea Farrar

14. For the Use of Art
Astrid Cats

15. Philosophical Inquiry: A Tool for Decision Making in Participatory Curation
Trish Scott, Ayisha de Lanerolle, Karen Eslea and individual participants

16. Teaching Visitor-Centered Exhibitions: A Duoethnography of Two Team Members
Ann Rowson Love and John Jay Boda

Part V. Sustaining Engaged Organizational Learning

17. Complementary: Reflections on Curator-Educator Teamwork at the Denver Art Museum
Stefania Van Dyke

18. Building a Workplace That Supports Educator – Curator Collaboration
Jennifer Wild Czajkowski and Salvador Salort-Pons

19. Visitor-Centered Exhibition Design: Theory into Practice
Elizabeth K. Eder, Andrew Pekarik and Zeynep Simavi

About the Editors and Contributors
Index

The 19 essays in this collection introduce and explore the concept and impact of ‘edu-curation’ with regard to exhibition development in art museums. Edu-curation promotes equal collaboration between art museum educators and curatorial staff. Villeneuve and Love developed the concept of edu-curation, the tenets of which draw from feminist systems theory. The collection is divided into five parts: ‘Foundations: The Need for Edu-Curation,’ ‘Readiness: Structuring Your Approach,’ ‘Collaboration in Action,’ ‘Seeing inside the Process,’ and ‘Sustaining Engaged Organizational Learning.’ The essays emphasize implementation of sustainable edu-curatorial practices. The book includes both theoretical essays pertaining to the philosophy supporting edu-curation and essays presenting models and case studies of edu-curation in practice. Ancillary materials include black-and-white illustrations and graphics. This study, with its innovative research, will be of interest to museum professionals in educational, curatorial, and exhibitions-related roles, as well as to educators and students in the fields of museum studies, education, and art history.

Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.