Reclaiming Culture: From Wind River to San Francisco

March 2, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

by Monica Villavicencio Sometimes following your calling means venturing so far outside your comfort zone that you’ll ache with homesickness. That was the choice for museum studies student Jordan Dresser MA ’15. But choosing a purpose-fueled future over the serenity of home was the only choice that made sense. Dresser is from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, a 3,500-square-mile-expanse of mountains and prairie. The reservation is home to two tribes, the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone, and it’s […]

Categories: Collaborations, Community, Museum Studies, Social Justice • Tags: collections, community, Cultural Property, global, social justice, students, USF Museum Studies

USF hosts 20 science museum directors from China

February 23, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

In Museums in China:  Power, Politics and Identities (Routledge, 2013), Tracy Lu discusses how modern museums have played a significant role in the formation of the modern Chinese state. Thousands of public museums in China attract and serve locals and tourists. More are on the way. According to Daisy Yiyou Wang, curator at the Peabody Essex Museum and former Smithsonian researcher, as of 2012, a new public museum broke ground every day in China. In comparison, at the height of its building […]

Categories: Collaborations, Forums, Museum Studies • Tags: faculty, global, science, USF Museum Studies, workshop, zoo

What are you looking at? Visual Literacy, Museums, and the Digital World

February 16, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

by Stephanie Brown Surgery that reconstructs a human face damaged by war. Ceramic works that join ancient traditions with modern practices. The relationship between aesthetic perception and the healing arts. What do these ideas and practices have in common? At first glance, almost nothing—but, for members of the International Visual Literacy Association, it’s all about the glance. More than glancing, it’s about deep looking. The IVLA defines visual literacy as “the ability to derive meaning from images of everything that […]

Categories: Forums, Museum Studies • Tags: curating, faculty, professional development, research, visual literacy

Infinite thank yous

February 9, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

compiled by Lina Benson, Museum Studies Assistant It’s amazing how much University of San Francisco Museum Studies students and faculty managed to pack into Fall Semester 2014. Faculty piloted three new courses: Curatorial Studies Practicum (Kate Lusheck); Introduction to Archaeology (Elizabeth Pena with the active participation of museum studies graduate student Brianna Jilson) and Museum Project Management Capstone (Marjorie Schwarzer and Stephanie Brown). Museum Studies: History and Theory (Paula Birnbaum), Collections Management and Preservation (Paloma Anoveros) and Museums and the […]

Categories: internships, Museum Studies • Tags: community, faculty, students, USF Museum Studies, workshop

MSGA elects 2015 officers

February 2, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

As its founding officers prepared to graduate last semester, MSGA elected its new officers for the year 2015.  Our president is Lydia Marouf.  Lydia spent her winter break in her hometown of Ramallah, Palestine visiting with family and researching museums there.  Vice President is Oregonian Hilary Dawn who returned from winter break early to help project manage and install the Reformations exhibition in Thacher Gallery.  Secretary Rheilly Llanos is an educator and former public school teacher and volleyball coach who hails […]

Categories: Community, Museum Studies • Tags: collaborate, students, USF Museum Studies

Reflections of a first semester curator

January 26, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

By Melissa Zabel Looking back at my first semester as a USF Museum Studies graduate student, I must confess that of all my completed coursework, I take the most pride in my contributions to one project—the creation of Reformations: Dürer & the New Age of Print. Opening on January 26, 2015, Reformations was collaboratively curated by the 14 students of MUSE 605: Curatorial Practicum. For me, Curatorial Practicum was a whirlwind of learning by doing. Early in the semester, exhibit […]

Categories: Exhibits, Museum Studies • Tags: art, collaborate, curating, exhibit, faculty, library, rare book, research, site visit, students, technology, Thacher Gallery, USF Museum Studies, visual literacy

Stuart McKee’s design career covers volumes

January 20, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

by Amber Spicer Editor’s note: This fall, University of San Francisco museum studies graduate student Amber Spicer sat down for the following interview with Professor Stuart McKee to discuss his new spring 2015 exhibition design practicum and career as a designer.  Next month, Stuart will be giving a public lecture at USF on typography in conjunction with Thacher Gallery’s Reformations exhibition. Q: What inspired you to pursue a career in design? Stuart:  What inspired me was the ability to produce […]

Categories: Exhibits, Interviews, Museum Studies • Tags: anthropology, art, curating, design, exhibit, faculty, students, Thacher Gallery, USF Museum Studies

Dürer & the New Age of Print to open in two weeks.

January 11, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

Professor Kate Lusheck‘s Curatorial Practicum Museum Studies class worked hard all Fall to produce a student-curated, collaborative exhibition entitled Reformations: Dürer & the New Age of Print. Reformations explores the impact of the introduction of printing in Reformation Europe through engravings and woodcuts by German artist Albrecht Dürer (1472-1528), as well as early printed books from the University’s Donohue Rare Book Room.  Reformations highlights how the new production and circulation of early prints and printed books, including devotional woodcuts, humanist […]

Categories: Exhibits, Forums, Museum Studies • Tags: art, collections, curating, design, exhibit, free lecture, global, library, rare book, students, Thacher Gallery, USF Museum Studies

Pop goes the exhibit

January 4, 2015 by Marjorie Schwarzer

Popup cafes, restaurants and shops. Theaters, shoe stores and art classes. Short-term experimental popup ventures are popping up all over the place: in parking lots, alleys, and sidewalks; BART stations, office lobbies, college campuses. Museums are increasingly taking part in the pop-up action, notably through the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) which defines pop up museums as “temporary exhibits created by the people who show up to participate.”  For a popup museum, someone chooses a theme and […]

Categories: Collaborations, Exhibits, Museum Studies • Tags: collaborate, exhibit, faculty, students, Thacher Gallery, workshop