University of Georgia students in Callan Steinmann’s “Introduction to Museum Studies” course (FCID 5010/7010) learn about many different aspects of museums. But this week they’re doing something they’ve never done before: organizing an exhibition.
On view Thursday, November 18, from 5 to 9 p.m. in the Shannon and Peter Candler Collection Study Room at the Georgia Museum of Art, “Works on Paper Pop-Up: Images of the South” features works on paper drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. The split-level class includes both undergraduate and graduate students, who worked on the pop-up exhibition as part of a semester-long project. The Introduction to Museum Studies course is a foundations class for the Interdisciplinary Museum Studies Certificate programs at UGA, and the students represent many areas of study across campus, including art history, art education, history, historic preservation, classics and studio art. Throughout the semester, students met with museum staff members to learn about the collection, object care and management, curatorial practice and interpretation.
Steinmann said, “This experiential learning project allows students to put theory into practice through hands-on research, curation and writing in the museum.”
Each student selected a work on paper from the collection (a photograph, a print, a watercolor, etc.) and wrote an extended label for it. They also worked in groups to create sections within their exhibition and collaborated on text that would help explain themes within the works they chose. Themes included the interaction between the landscape and the idea of human progress, romanticization of the “Old South,” Black southern life and the church and the economic shifts that led to the “New South” and urbanization.
The exhibition was organized by: Ripley Bennett, Cammie Chavez, Catie Cook, Ash Dial, Andrew East, Olivia Eubanks, Rachel Gooch, Terri Hatfield, Alysa Matsunaga, Madeline Nagy, Sarah Owen, Paula Reynaldi, Ciel Rodriguez, Susanna Teske, Renata Tompson and Gabriella Victorio.
Hillary Brown
Michael Lachowski
