Student Curated Exhibitions
Every year, Niagara University students have the opportunity to develop student curated exhibitions through two course offerings from the Art History with Museum Studies program: AHM252A: Introduction to Museum Studies and AHM357A: Exhibiting Cultures.
AHM252A: Introduction to Museum Studies
AHM252A: Introduction to Museum Studies is a hands-on interdisciplinary introduction that builds understanding for museums' history, societal roles, and key functions.
As students explore these components, they also learn about the process of building an exhibition and directly apply their knowledge and creative ideas to a public exhibition as the culminating project.
AHM357A: Exhibiting Cultures
AHM357A: Exhibiting Cultures is a hands on course taught by the Curator of Folk Arts at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University.
Spring 2022's AHM357A: Exhibiting Cultures course developed an exhibition focused on local traditional art made with paper.
Serving as an interdisciplinary introduction to museum exhibitions, this course examines the theoretical, ethical, and methodological issues underpinning the practice, especially those concerning the representation of people, their lives and creations.
Through hands-on coursework, students learn everything that goes into the development of a folk arts exhibition or program: from learning to conduct interviews, to using fieldwork to draft exhibit text, to framing artworks and installing exhibits.
The semester long course culminates in an original, class-generated and curated exhibition or program rooted in fieldwork conducted by the professor and students in the course.