ARTH489N

Students will study how collectors, curators, patrons, artists and architects collaborated to display modern art from the late 19th century to the present, particularly in the United States. The course focuses on specific exhibitions and museums (for example the Phillips Collection, MoMA, Barnes Foundation, and Maryland Historical Society) to explore historical contexts for and theories of the display of art. Local museums will serve as an extension of our classroom as we analyze current exhibitions at the Renwick Gallery and the Phillips Collection to understand how museums function as spaces of knowledge building, identity formation, and politics. At the end of the course, we will study how artists have engaged with these spaces with site-specific art works and practices of institutional critique. As a final project, students will propose a new installation of a museum's permanent collection that reimagines what its works of art can do and what they can mean.