![Development & Fundraising Internship [Cambridge Art Association]](https://sites.tufts.edu/museumstudents/wp-content/themes/kale/sample/images/thumb1.jpg)
Development & Fundraising Internship Description: The Cambridge Art Association (CAA) is seeking an intern to assist with development and fundraising related activities for Fall 2015. Internships at the the CAA are hands-on and immersive. The Gallery Development intern will work with the Assistant Director to …
![Workshop and Program Internship [Cambridge Art Association]](https://sites.tufts.edu/museumstudents/wp-content/themes/kale/sample/images/thumb3.jpg)
Workshop and Program Internship Description: The Cambridge Art Association is seeking an intern to assist our Programs Coordinator with the organization and implementation of visual-art-centric programming. This internship is an excellent opportunity for an undergrad or graduate student to gain hands on experience in program …
One of the (many) ongoing debates in museums concerns the definition of what is educational. At first glance, you would think that this would be fairly simple: an activity that teaches or imparts information in some way. In reality, it is far more complicated. Where do we draw the line between education and entertainment? Many museums struggle with finding the correct balance of fun and learning without straying into the realm of “edutainment.”
Enter the City Museum in St. Louis. The Museum has been around since 1997, when the International Shoe Company was converted by designer Bob Cassily into the current Museum. Arguably, the best way to describe it is as a gigantic playground for adults and children alike. Visitors are encouraged to explore a humongous 10 story slide (as opposed to the less humongous 5 story slide), a huge ball pit, realistic underground caves, and planes to explore. If you haven’t had a chance to check out what their museum offers, I would suggest you visit their website or check out this video.
So what is the educational value of the City Museum? Is it merely an amusement park dressed up as a museum? Cassily, founder and designer of the Museum, believes that the point of the Museum is not to have people “learn every fact;” rather, the purpose of the Museum is to instill a sense of exploration and discovery that is not place-specific. To Cassily and the City Museum staff, if the Museum is effectively educating, it sees itself as helping its visitors take what they practice in the museum and use it to navigate the outside world.
If we consider what the Museum is doing as more entertainment than education, what does that mean for our children’s museums? Is it a slippery slope? Or is it an effective way to bring in visitors and to give a fresh face to what is generally seen as the stuffy, closed off world of museums?
If we consider it to be education, and not merely entertainment, what kind of a precedent does that set for other museums or institutions providing educational resources and activities? Is it an equally slippery slope?
What do you think?
One thing is for sure – educational or not, I’ll be visiting the next time I find myself in St. Louis.
#MuseumWorkersSpeak, one of the results of the rouge session on museum activism at AAM’s Atlanta conference this year, is meeting up in metro-Boston for the first time on Wednesday, June 24th, from 6:30 to 8:30. The group conversation and potluck is at 17 Tudor St, …
We normally think of eating/drinking and museums as mutually exclusive, but here’s a couple of fun, local events this week that put that idea to rest: For “Historic Beer in a Historic Place,” the Old State House is hosting Blue Hills Brewery for a chance …
Last Tuesday was MoMA’s annual Party in the Garden, a benefit that honors artists and boasts an impressive VIP guest list. This year, the guests, who paid $25,000 to $100,000 per table, were greeted by dozens of museum staff with signs that read “Modern Art, Ancient Wages” and “MoMA, Don’t Cut Our Healthcare.” The protest, organized by MoMA staff and their union, is in response to proposed cuts to their healthcare plan. While there is a long and rich history of protesting MoMA, these actions highlight the politics of museum employment that extend far beyond MoMA’s midtown territory.
Art history is a strange field. Our scholarship focuses on a world full of very expensive objects with actual monetary values and still manage to produce volumes of fundamentally Marxist-dominated discourse. Art museums are steeped in cultural capital and often have correspondingly high admission fees (obviously, MoMA is no exception to this). However, the salaries of museum employees, the people who are responsible for the museum’s daily function, rarely correlate to the public view of museums as places of wealth.
Victoria Wong, a library assistant at MoMA, truthfully told Hyperallergic that “nobody gets a job at a museum to become a millionaire.” Unless you’re working at the very top, the museum world is overly competitive and underpaid (not the mention the gendered and racialized politics of who becomes directors). American artist Fred Wilson perfectly proved the disjuncture between the visibility and respect of different positions in the museum when he dressed in a guard’s uniform and was subsequently ignored by the visitors as part of his 1991 installation, Guarded View.
So why do we choose to enter this field? Personally, I’m doing it because I genuinely care about preserving all material forms of history and displaying them for public access. And although the answer will undoubtedly vary between individuals, I’d bet we all have a honest connection and dedication to the true mission of museums. And if you follow the MoMA Local 2110’s instagram, you’ll get a taste of their undying love for MoMA’s collection, even while protesting. However, no institution should take advantage of its employees’ honest commitment without proper compensation. We talk a lot about making museums inviting and attractive to the public, but we also should hold them to the same standards as workplaces for employees.