Museum Professions Scholarly Projects
Shannon Hahn
Deaccession Decision-Making During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-Site Case Study
of Art Museums in the United States
At the beginning of the pandemic, museums were forced to close, resulting in significant
losses in earned revenue. To address budgetary shortfalls across the museum field,
the Association of Art Museum Directors temporarily relaxed their deaccessioning guidelines
to allow museums to sell works of art from their collections and use proceeds to support
the direct care of collections. This project utilized a qualitative multi-site case
study and textual analysis to examine deaccession decisions of four art museums in
the United States that deaccessioned works of art during the pandemic. Findings demonstrated
that museums were taking advantage of the new relaxed guidelines, while also following
pre-pandemic best practices for deaccessioning.
Samantha Becker
The 2020 Awakening: A Study On Exhibiting Topics of Race and Identity in Mid-Sized
Art Museums
After the many racial injustices that occurred in 2020, cultural institutions have
been motivated to educate the public on historical and contemporary topics of race
and identity. This project sought to analyze exemplary cases of exhibition production
with topics of race and identity in mid-sized art museums. The goal was to provide
a set of recommendations for exhibiting these topics to bolster community trust. Two
museums were studied–the Montclair Art Museum and Newark Museum of Art–which revealed
that the exhibitions at both institutions were relevant to contemporary issues, engaging
to their respective communities, and educational for a wide range of audiences.
Elyse Gombas
Through Fire and Water: Protecting Museum Collections Against Increasing Climate Change
Risks
As stewards of cultural heritage, museums have the responsibility to protect their
collections from increasing climate change risks. Literature revealed that though
cultural heritage sites are threatened by climate change, museums lack sufficient
climate change adaptation strategies. In response, this study examined how museums
can create effective climate change adaptation strategies. Through a qualitative comparative
case study of the Getty Center and Newark Museum of Art and content and textual analyses,
the study identified key themes of institutional mission, values, and policies, research,
education and training, physical prevention, and collaboration as requirements for
successful adaptation.
Sua Lorena Mendez
Museums & Community Resilience: Improving Post-Crisis Outreach in Latinx Communities
by Combining Library and Museum Practices
Museums are held in the public trust and are accountable to their communities, including
minority groups such as the Latinx population. Despite this, museums struggle to engage
with Latinx communities, who are particularly affected during and after a crisis or
emergency. Currently, museums do not have professional guidelines on supporting community
resilience, or a community’s ability to respond to and recover from a crisis. In contrast,
libraries, which function as similar community organizations, have field-wide community
resilience plans and professional librarians have actively researched how libraries
can assist their communities after a significant crisis. Using a multi-case library
and museum comparative study, this project aimed to identify how museums may improve
post-crisis outreach in Latinx communities and become integral to community resilience.
Katharine Anne Nelson
Decolonize This Place: The Activist Potential of Anthropology Museums
Reviewed literature has revealed that museum activism can benefit society, though
a gap appeared pertaining to anthropology museums. Historically, anthropology museums
were tied to colonialism and even racism, and thus need to evolve to become more socially
responsible. Through a qualitative case study of four anthropology museums in the
United States – the Museum of Us, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography,
the Penn Museum and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology – this study examined
how anthropology museums can change and engage with activism.
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Devon Anna Mancini
Propaganda or Persuasion: A Multisite Case Study Analysis of the Impact of Museum Communications on American Public Trust -
Katherine Angela Himics
Designing for Adolescent Mental Wellness: An Analysis of Museum Education, Art Therapy, and Developmental Theory -
Anthony Caruso
Ethics or Law: Which should Prevail in Conflicts Regarding the Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art? -
Matthew R. Dellaguzzo
Marching on Together: the Future of Non-Profit Museums in a For-Profit World