ANTI-RACIST APPROACHES TO ART MUSEUMS TODAY
As expectations regarding the social responsibilities of art museums change, training students how to be anti-discriminatory in their professional practice becomes ever more crucial. This course is an introductory seminar to anti-racist curatorial practice. As such, students will explore various aspects of museum history, art history, collection management, object interpretation, fundraising, exhibition design, cataloging, community engagement and more to analyze the ways in which museums have functioned as cultural repositories of colonization and continue to exist as institutions rooted in imperialist histories and practices. The course is a radical reframing that considers what it means to see the functionality of whiteness as a system of possession, and how to employ various anti-racist, decolonial, and Black feminist methodologies to undo its cultural hegemony in the arts.